Patent ID: 6989473

Claim:
A method for producing a male sterile plant of the genus Petunia , comprising the steps of: providing a plant expression cassette comprising a nucleic acid consisting of a DNA which encodes a zinc finger transcription factor, wherein the DNA has the base sequence from position 1 to position 777 of the base sequence indicated by SEQ ID NO:1 providing Petunia plant cells having an endogenous transcription factor controlling the development of pollen, wherein the gene encoding the endogenous transcription factor hybridizes under stringent conditions to the nucleic acid; introducing the expression cassette into the plant cells; regenerating the plant cells, into which the expression cassette has been introduced, into plants to produce regenerated plants, and screening the regenerated plants for one in which the nucleic acid is expressed so that expression of the endogenous transcription factor is suppressed.