Transgenic cotton expressing synthesized antifungal NaD1 gene confers enhanced resistance to fusarium wilt and verticillium wilt

Cotton (Gossypium hirsutumL.) is one of the most significant cash crops as it is the backbone of the global textile industry. Although conventional breeding is already being used to solve the problems related to cotton, there is a rampant reduction in the yield and quality of cotton due to insect pests and fungal pathogens. The diseases that pose the major threat to cotton production are Fusarium and Verticillium wilts. NaD1, a plant defense protein from Nicotian aalata, was found to have effective antifungal activity against many filamentous fungi including two of the major cotton pathogens, Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Vasinfectum (Fov) and Verticillium dahlia. In the present study synthetic Nicotiana alata Defense 1 (NaD1) gene, under the control of a CaMV 35S constitutive promoter, was transferred  into cotton, the transformation of shoot tip explants was achieved via Agrobacterium tumefaciens LBA4404. PCR and RT-PCR analyses showed that NaD1 was successfully incorporated into the cotton genome and expressed in transgenic lines. Comparing to the wildtype, NaD1-transgene cotton plants showed enhanced protection against V. dahlia. The success of this work may act as a stepping stone in the development of new cotton cultivars with improved fungal disease resistance and thus can play a major role in reducing loss due to the widely prevalent fungal diseases in cotton.