Patent ID: 7718850

Claim:
A method for reducing seed shattering in a plant of the species Brassica napus, Brassica junceae or Brassica campestris comprising the following steps: (1) creating a population of transgenic lines of said plant, wherein said transgenic lines of said population exhibit variation in podshatter resistance, and wherein said population is obtainable by (i) introducing a chimeric gene into cells of said plant, to create transgenic cells, said chimeric gene comprising the following operably linked DNA: (a) a plant-expressible promoter; (b) a DNA region which when transcribed yields a double-stranded RNA molecule comprising a first and second RNA region wherein said first RNA region comprises a nucleotide sequence of at least 200 consecutive nucleotides of the nucleotide sequence of SEQ ID NO: 1 other than a bHLH encoding region; said second RNA region comprises a nucleotide sequence complementary to said at least 200 consecutive nucleotides of said first RNA region; said first and second RNA regions are capable of base-pairing to form a double stranded RNA molecule between said at least 200 consecutive nucleotides of said first and second regions; (c) optionally, a 3′ end region comprising transcription termination and polyadenylation signals functioning in cells of said plant; wherein said chimeric gene, when expressed in cells of said plant, increases podshatter resistance compared to podshatter resistance in an untransformed plant, while maintaining an agronomically relevant threshability of said pods of said plant; (ii) regenerating transgenic lines from said transgenic cells; and (2) selecting a podshatter resistant plant from said population wherein said plant has pods exhibiting reduced seed shattering while maintaining an agronomically relevant threshability of said pods.