Achievements

1- The isolation and cloning of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) endotoxin genes from Bt isolates collected from different Egyptian habitats that are effective against different orders of insects.
2- Transgenic potato lines expressing Bt toxin genes have been developed and evaluated for potato tuber moth (PTM) resistance.
3- Within the Bt research domain, a biocontrol agent AGERIN was formulated and commercialized through a private company. The product controls Lepidoptran insects infesting many crops.
4- Plant viruses infect economic horticultural crops in Egypt causing devastating losses. Therefore, AGERI targeted major commodities and applied genetic engineering technologies to successfully develop potato lines resistant to potato virus X (PVX), potato virus Y (PVY) and potato leaf roll virus (PLRV); melon and squash lines resistant to zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV) in addition to tomato lines resistant to the whitefly transmitted Geminivirus, tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV).
5- Molecular Markers, restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs), random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPDs), amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs), and microsatellites or simple sequence repeats (SSRs) have been used to study genetic variability and to fingerprint economically important crops such as cotton, maize, tomato, date palm and rapeseed.