Ongoing Projects
Rational & Justification

AGERI has based its projects on the concept of maintaining a program that is focused on the problems of Egypt. The main objective is to build a national capacity within Egypt for the sustainable production of crucial crops to the economy and a safer, cleaner environment by adopting the most advanced genetic engineering and gene transfer tools.

Hence, AGERI targets to improve resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses on a limited number of crops: maize, potato, tomato, cucurbits, faba beans, wheat and cotton. The projects carried at AGERI have the potential to substantially impact crop productivity and the environment by:

• Reducing the dependency on pesticides through the production of transgenic cotton conferring resistance to insect pests and Bt. -modified potato germplasm conferring resistance to potato tuber moth (PTM);

• Saving substantially on foreign currency directed to the importation of virus-free potato seeds by producing transgenic potato plants resistant to potato virus X (PVX), potato virus Y (PVY) and potato leaf roll virus (PLRV);

• Cloning the genes encoding for important economic traits in tomatoes, especially those related to stress-tolerance and disease resistance;

• Developing an efficient regeneration and transformation system in maize for the production of transgenic plants resistant to the corn borer insects, a major limiting factor to maize production in Egypt;

• Mapping the rapeseed genome in order to develop cultivars adopted to the constraints of the Egyptian environment and thus securing a good source of edible oil;

• Production of transgenic faba bean plants with resistance to bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV) and faba bean necrotic yellows virus (FBNYV);

• Developing tomato yellow leaf curl virus resistant tomato germplasm using different strategies like the coat protein and the replicase genes through an Agrobacterium-based transformation system;

• Engineering coat protein genes to develop potyvirus resistant cucurbits;

• Developing efficient diagnostic tools for the identification and characterization of major viruses in Egypt.

These projects are relevant for Egyptian Agriculture since they reflect a significant positive impact on agricultural productivity and foreign exchange. To illustrate, Egyptian Bt transgenic cotton, resistant to major insect pests, would result in substantial savings of the US $50 million spent annually on the purchase of imported pesticides. Mapping of rapeseed oil has a potential to substantially reduce the 400,000 tons of edible oil which is imported into Egypt annually. Similarly, transgenic potato varieties resistant to selected viruses & insect pests would prevent the expenditure of approximately US $33 million per annum on the import of seed potatoes.

While all these efforts are directed toward bridging the food gap, they also focus on the production of healthier food with minimal use of agrochemicals and pesticides. This will guarantee the production of environmentally friendly agricultural products in a sustainable manner.