ENHANCEMENT ON IRON AND ZINC ACCUMULATION IN GENETICALLY ENGINEERED WHEAT PLANTS

The common wheat, Triticum aestivum, belongs to the genus Triticum, and the family Graminae, or, the grass family (Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 2014). The common wheat is described to be a mid-tall annual grass consisting of flat leaf blades with a terminal floral spike (CFIA, 2014).

This spike consists of perfect flowers (male and female reproductive systems in the same flower). Culms (or stems of the plant) are comprised of five nodes with four foliage leaves, one of which, the flag leaf, subtends the inflorescence.  The inflorescence consists of seed-producing flowers that contain specialised branches called spikelets (Dixon et.al., 2018). The spikelets consists of two glumes that enclose approximately nine florets and are then alternately arranged on the rachis (CFIA, 2017). Figure 1 below represents the various components of the wheat plant in detail.

T.aestivum is a hexaploid (so: AABBDD), an organism containing six sets of chromosomes, 42 in total (Australian Government, 2008). Various other wheat species contain a form of haploid with a set of seven chromosomes (CFIA, 2014).