Rivka Barg, Inst Plant Sciences, ARO, Volcani Center, Bet-Dagan 50250
Email: rivkab@volcani.agri.gov.il
Yehiam Salts , Inst Plant Sciences, ARO, Volcani Center, Bet-Dagan 50250
Email: salts@ volcani.agri.gov.il
Gozal Ben Hayyim, Inst Plant Sciences, ARO, Volcani Center, Bet-Dagan 50250
Email: vcgozal@ volcani.agri.gov.il
Sara Shabtai, Inst Plant Sciences, ARO, Volcani Center, Bet-Dagan 50250
Email:saras@ volcani.agri.gov.il

Abstract
Improvement of drought tolerance in high yielding legumes, such as the clover species Trifolium alexandrium is a prerequisite for their incorporation in the crops cycle in the arid south zone of Israel. This project aims at improving drought tolerance in Trifolium alexandrium var Tavor, via biotechnological approach, based on transformation of the transgene 35S::FAD3. To this end, during the second year of the project we have performed a set of transformation experiments using various hormonal and agro co-cultivation conditions, and as explants cotyledons detached from imbibed seeds for 24h at 80C. until this point we did not we did not recover fully regenerated plants from the transformation experiments, thus the third year will be devoted to solving this problem, especially induction of rooting of putative transgenic shoots.