Methods and compositions for transformation of cereals using cultured shoot meristematic tissue

A method for transforming a plant comprising:

• (a) culturing an isolated meristematic tissue of the plant on a meristem proliferation medium so as to produce adventitious meristematic cells in the isolated meristematic tissue;
• (b) after step (a), introducing a nucleic acid into at least one of the adventitious meristematic cells, thereby producing a transformed cell comprising the nucleic acid;
• (c) culturing the transformed cell on meristem proliferation medium so as to promote growth of transformed meristematic cells;
• (d) selecting transformed meristematic cells or at least one structure thereof;
• and
• (e) regenerating a transformed plant from the transformed meristematic cells or structure thereof;
• wherein the plant is a cereal plant, the nucleic acid is introduced into the adventitious meristematic cell by particle bombardment, the meristematic tissue is a shoot apex and the meristem proliferation medium comprises from 0 mg/L to about 3 mg/L of an auxin, from about 2 mg/L to about 8 mg/L of a cytokinin, from about 10 g/L to about 60 g/L of maltose or about 10 g/L to about 60 g/L of sucrose;
• and from about 0.1 μM to about 50 μM copper.