Herbicide tolerance and gene silencing stability over generations in the ricin bio-detoxicated castor bean.

Abstract

Castor bean (Ricinus communis L.) is an important cultivated oilseed. Seeds contain ricinoleic acid, a valuable product for a variety of industries. Castor cake is a residue of ricinoleic manufacture and could be used as animal feed due to its high amount of protein. However, castor cake contains ricin and RCA₁₂₀, both highly toxic and allergenic proteins. In 2017, we reported the development of a transgenic event (named TB14S-5D) with an undetectable amount of ricin/RCA_120. In the present work, we evaluate TB14S-5D for tolerance to the herbicide imazapyr, as it contains the selectable marker gene, ahas, which was previously isolated from Arabidopsis thaliana and contains a mutation at position 653 bp. In addition, we demonstrated that the ricin coding genes are stably silenced over three generations.