Cotton is an important fiber crop in many areas of the world. The methods of biotechnology have been applied to cotton for improvement of the agronomic traits and the quality of the product. The method of introducing transgenes into cotton plants has been demonstrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,004,863. One such agronomic trait important in cotton production is herbicide tolerance, in particular, tolerance to glyphosate herbicide. This trait has been introduced into cotton plants and is a successful product now used in cotton production. The current commercial Roundup Ready® cotton event (1445) provides excellent tolerance to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, through the four-leaf stage (Nida et al., J. Agric. Food Chem. 44:1960-1966, 1996; Nida et al., J. Agric. Food Chem. 44:1967-1974, 1996). However, foliar application beyond the four-leaf stage must be limited due to insufficient tolerance in male reproductive tissues in certain environmental conditions. This lack of male reproductive tolerance appears to be a result of insufficient CP4 EPSPS expression in critical tissues, higher sensitivity of these tissues to glyphosate, and accumulation of high amounts of glyphosate in these strong sink tissues (Pline et al., Weed Sci. 50:438-447, 2002). There is a need for a cotton plant more highly glyphosate tolerant than Roundup Ready® cotton 1445.
It would be advantageous to be able to detect the presence of a particular event in order to determine whether the progeny of a sexual cross contain a transgene of interest. In addition, a method for detecting a particular event would be helpful for complying with regulations requiring pre-market approval or labeling of foods derived from recombinant crop plants, for example. It is possible to detect the presence of a transgene by any well known nucleic acid detection method such as the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) or DNA hybridization using nucleic acid probes. These detection methods generally focus on frequently used genetic elements, such as promoters, 3′ transcription terminators, marker genes, etc. As a result, such methods may not be useful for discriminating between different events, particularly those produced using the same DNA construct unless the sequence of genomic chromosomal DNA adjacent to the inserted DNA (“flanking genomic DNA”) is known. Event-specific DNA detection methods for a glyphosate tolerant cotton event 1445 have been described (US 20020120964, herein incorporated by reference in its entirety).
The present invention relates to a glyphosate tolerant cotton event MON 88913, compositions contained therein, and to the method for the detection of the transgene/genomic insertion region in cotton event MON 88913 and progeny thereof.