Abstract: Plant stresses such as pest drought, and excessive temperatures can lead to significant losses of crops each year. There is a continuing need to develop novel plant varieties that are less susceptible to damage or loss by such stresses. The present invention provides a system and method for generating plants having an increased resistance to plant stresses such as drought or adverse temperatures. Transgenic plants expressing a phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC) gene can show an unexpected and dramatic improvement in their capacity to tolerate a variety of stress conditions. Moreover, increased PI-PLC expression can further lead to marked increase in plant growth rates, maturation, and lipid content. The present invention encompasses transgenic plants having modifications with regard to PI-PLC pathways, such as altered PI-PLC levels, and plant products thereof.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method of making a genetically transformed plant which has an altered content of at least one product of a secondary metabolic pathway. The method consists of introducing into a plant cell capable of being transformed and regenerated to a whole plant a DNA expression cassette. The expression cassette includes DNA sequences required for transformation and selection in plant cells. It also includes a DNA sequence that, under the control of a promoter active in plant cells, encodes a protein capable of modifying the utilization of a substrate in the secondary metabolic pathway. The substrate is not a primary metabolite of the group selected from glucose, amino acids, common fatty acids and nucleotides. A plant or plant tissues including seeds can then be recovered having an altered content of at least one product of the secondary metabolic pathway. The invention also provides for feed products derived from the plants and seeds obtained according to the method.

Abstract: Plant stresses such as pest drought, and excessive temperatures can lead to significant losses of crops each year. There is a continuing need to develop novel plant varieties that are less susceptible to damage or loss by such stresses. The present invention provides a system and method for generating plants having an increased resistance to plant stresses such as drought or adverse temperatures. Transgenic plants expressing a phosphoinositide-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC) gene can show an unexpected and dramatic improvement in their capacity to tolerate a variety of stress conditions. Moreover, increased PI-PLC expression can further lead to marked increase in plant growth rates, maturation, and lipid content. The present invention encompasses transgenic plants having modifications with regard to PI-PLC pathways, such as altered PI-PLC levels, and plant products thereof.

Abstract: A plant, multicellular fragment of said plant or seed of said plant transformed with a nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO 1 or an allelic variant or a fragment thereof or a genetic equivalent thereof according to the degeneracy of the genetic code coding for a peptide having a Brassica myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase activity, said plant, multicellular fragment or seed having reduced myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase activity when compared with an equivalent untransformed plant, multicellular fragment or seed, such that there is reduced phytate present in the plant, multicellular fragment or seed. The invention also provides a method for reducing phytate in Brassica, which method comprises growing a Brassica plant comprising one of a myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase antisense sequence and a myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase cosuppression sequence thereby yielding a reduced amount of myo-inositol 1-phosphate synthase and consequently reduced phytate in said Brassica.