Exclusive generation of true-breeding transgenic plants via Agrobacteriummediated transformation of barley pollen cultures

Reliable and efficient barley genetic transformation technology is indis-pensible for contemporary functional analyses of regulatory and coding nucleotide sequences as well as for the generation of genetically engi-neered breeding material. Biolistic gene transfer has long been the pre-ferred system for the integration of foreign genes into barley (Wan and Lemaux 1994). Compared with this method, Agrobacterium-mediated gene transfer predominantly results in transgenic plants of higher quality with regard to several aspects. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of barley was first published by Tingay and co-workers in 1997, however, only a few labs have established this method to date. Hence, further im-provements as well as an increased reproducibility of the method is desirable.