NEW TRANSGENIC PLANTS AND METHOD FOR THEIR PRODUCTION

摘要

A transgenic plant exhibiting an improved biomass related property, such as an altered lignin content, lignin composition or extractability of lignin, or an altered fibre length, or a combination thereof, said alteration determined by comparison to the corresponding property of the wild-type of the same species, can be achieved by modifying the expression of a pectin methyl esterase (PME) gene in at least one cell of said plant. The down-regulation of PttPMEI (GenBank Accession No. AJ277547) has been shown to result in a fibre length increase of about 5 % and the up- regulation of said gene correspondingly a reduction of about 7 %. Transgenic plants exhibiting altered biomass related properties and methods for their production are disclosed.