Patent ID: 8729338

Claim:
A method of increasing the sucrose content in one or more plant cells of a sugarcane plant, a sweet sorghum plant, or a sugar beet plant, the method comprising inserting into said one or more plant cells at least one exogenous nucleic acid, wherein the at least one exogenous nucleic acid comprises: (i) at least 20 nucleotides of an antisense sequence of a uridine monophosphate synthase (UMPS) open reading frame (ORF): (iii) at least 20 nucleotides of a sense sequence of a UMPS ORF: and/or (iii) (i) as above, and (ii) as above, optionally with a spliceable intron sequence between (i) and (ii), and wherein the spliceable intron sequence is at least 70 by in length and the nucleotide sequence of (i) and the nucleotide sequence of (ii) are complementary to one another, thereby increasing the sucrose content in said sugarcane plant, said sweet sorghum plant, or said sugar beet plant.