ACTIVATION TAGGING PLATFORM FOR MAIZE， AND RESULTANT TAGGED POPULATIONS AND PLANTS

Disclosed herein is an activation tagging construct for maize， resulting tagged populations and plants. In one example， an activation tagging DNA construct includes a coding sequence for a transposase， a detectable reporter (such as anthocyanin regulatory genes B-Peru and CI) and a non-autonomous transposable T-DNA cassette. For example， the transposable T-DNA cassette is inserted into the detectable reporter encoding region such that the B-Peru and CI genes express anthocyanins in a cell containing the maize activation tagging DNA construct only upon excision of the transposable cassette. Methods of generating a tagged population of maize plants include transforming a maize plant cell or tissue with the disclosed constructs.