Expression analysis of putative high-affinity phosphate transporters in Chinese winter wheats

China's soils tend to be phosphate deficient. Application of phosphorus fertilisers to the soil is yield and cost ineffective as much of the phosphate applied is rapidly locked-in and is inaccessible to the crop. Chinese Institutes have established intensive wheat breeding programmes to generate wheat varieties that produce adequate yields and grain quality in such soils. Three such wheat cultivars have been identified with good performance characteristics in the field. These three cultivars are thought to harbour chromosome translocations that may confer enhanced phosphate scavenging abilities to the plants. The isolation and study of the expression of high-affinity phosphate transporters in tissues of these wheats, in two of the donor wheatgrasses and in another widely planted Chinese wheat variety is presented and the first full-length sequence of a wheat phosphate transporter and partial clones of several other putative phosphate transporters are reported. Relative quantitative reverse-transcription - polymerase chain-reaction was used to demonstrate that different phosphate transporters have different expression patterns within a given variety and respond differently to phosphate deprivation. The significance of the genetic background for these findings and for the different phosphate acquisition properties of the wheats under study is discussed.