Changes in phenotype of transgenic amaranth Amaranthus retroflexus L., overexpressing ARGOS-LIKE gene

Abstract

Amaranth is a new and promising crop for the Russian climate, notable for its well-balanced amino acid composition. Yield increase using the methods of genetic engineering is a challenging task. We generated transgenic plants of amaranth with expression of the Arabidopsis thaliana ARGOS-LIKE gene under the control of the dahlia mosaic virus promoter. We achieved 1.4% transformation effectiveness. In comparison with wild-type amaranth, we observed a 21% increase in stem length, 79% increase in leaf length, and 190% increase in fresh weight of transgenic plants. It was shown that ARGOS-LIKE gene of A. thaliana along with the dahlia mosaic virus promoter can be used to increase primarily the green weight of shoot and leaf size of amaranth.