TOOLS OF GENETIC
ENGINEERING IN PLANTS
Transfer
and expression of foreign genes in plant cells, now routine practice in several
laboratories around the world, has become a major tool to carry out gene
expression studies and to obtain plant varieties of potential agricultural
interest. The capacity to introduce and express diverse foreign genes in
plants, first described for tobacco in De Block (1984), has been extended to
many species. Transgenic crops such as tomato, papaya, cotton, maize, soybean
etc., are now available for human consumption and by complementing traditional
methods of crop improvement (and thus becoming an integral part of
agriculture), they will have a profound impact on food production, economic
development and on the development of a sustainable agricultural system during
the 21st century. Although the capacity to introduce and manipulate specific
gene expression in plants provides a powerful tool for fundamental research,
much of the support for plant transformation research has been provided because
of the generation of plants with useful and rapidly discernible phenotypes
which are unachievable by conventionalplant breeding i.e., resistance to
viruses, insects, herbicides, or post-harvest deterioration (Nelson et al., 1988; Staskawicz et al., 1995). In this chapter the
technical aspects of the state of the art in plant engineering are described.
It also identifies technical problems remaining in the development of systems
of plant transformation applicable to crop improvement.
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