Tissue culture and transformation of Oenothera biennis

Five cultivars of Oenothera biennis have been tested for callogenesis and organogenesis on different media. The cultivar CV3 has been transformed by Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain which introduces into the plant genome kanamycin resistance gene and the T-DNA ipt gene which causes increased levels of cytokinins. Transformed tissues showed elevated levels of cytokinins and grew as teratomas forming clumps of short, branched shoots with small modified leaves. Roots appeared rarely in later subcultivations of some teratomous clones.