Gen düzenleme teknolojisi (CRISPR) kullanılarak canavar otuna (Orobanche spp., Phelipanche spp.) karşı dayanıklı domates geliştirilmesi

Tomato is one of the main cultivated plants with economic value and extensive production-consumption in the World. The factors limiting production and affecting yields, such as environmental conditions, soil structure, plant nutrition practices, irrigation methods, and pathogens, are also quite restrictive in tomato cultivation. Broomrape (Orobanche spp. / Phelipanche spp.) is a completely parasitic weed that survives depending on its host and causes yield and quality losses in tomato in the World, including Turkey. Under suitable environmental conditions, broomrape seeds germinate by a "strigolactones" signal, a plant hormone synthesized by the carotenoid pathway and secreted from the host plant's roots. In this thesis, SlCCD7 and/or SlCCD8 (Carotenoid Cleavage Dioxygenase 7 and 8) genes, that are known to play a critical role in strigolactone synthesis in tomato, were manipulated by CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing technology. Guide RNAs and Cas9 designed in this method were transferred to tomato using the Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation method. Among the many transgenic events, deletion/insertion knockouts and in-frame modifications of slccd7, slccd8, and slccd7-slccd8 were generated. The significant homozygous biallelic "in-frame" mutation between Thr42- Val105 in the SlCCD7-exon 1 region of slccd7 T2 mutants has been characterized. The in-frame mutation may negatively affect the strigolactone pathway and provide resistance against Orobanche spp. / Phelipanche spp. Mutants with this "in-frame" mutation have the potential to be an essential breeding material in terms of their agronomic characteristics and -possible- broomrape resistance genetic source.