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Fertile plants of wheat have been regenerated from protoplasts in several laboratories. The objective of this study was to develop a transformation system using protoplasts as target cells. Protoplasts were isolated from cell suspensions initiated from an anther-derived callus. The protoplasts were transformed by electroporation using pBARGUS or pBAS, both carrying the Basta resistance (BAR) gene. A total of 2,761 calli were produced from electroporation transformed protoplasts in 3 independent experiments. Six calli survived selective culture on 10 mg/l phosphinothricin (PPT), a concentration that completely inhibited the growth of non-transformed wheat callus. Five PPT resistant calli showed phosphinothricin acetyltransferase (PAT) activity, whereas the sixth probably was a mutant. The transformed wheat calli could tolerate PPT concentrations up to 2,560 mg/l. Southern blot analyses confirmed the integration of the BAR gene in wheat genomes. The integrated DNA sequence may have partially methylated and tandemly repeated at least once. These results demonstrate the production of stably transformed wheat calli by electroporation-mediated direct gene transfer into protoplasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]