How are novel wheat plants made imidazolinone tolerant?
The ALS gene, which encodes for the ALS enzyme, is the target for developing the imidazolinone tolerance trait. In imidazolinone tolerant wheat, a mutation within the ALS gene was induced by exposing the wheat seed to a chemical mutagen. The induced mutations, which occurred within the ALS gene of the wheat genome, altered the ALS enzyme interaction with imidazolinone so that it could not affect amino acid synthesis. The wheat seed was then grown in the presence of imidazolinone to select the herbicide tolerant plants.
