ABSTRACT
The continuous and steep increase in world population poses a serious challenge for agriculture to meet the demand of feeding this burgeoning population with limited available resources. Intensi„ed agriculture and conventionalbreeding approaches in the twenty-„rst century have witnessed
CONTENTS
4.1Introduction ................................................................................................ 133 4.2 History of Plant Genetic Transformation ............................................... 136 4.3 Importance of Plant Genetic Transformation ........................................ 138
4.3.1 Understanding Basic Plant Biology ............................................. 138 4.3.2Applied Plant Biotechnology ....................................................... 140
4.4Methods for Developing Transgenic Plants ........................................... 141 4.4.1 Agrobacterium Transformation ................................................... 142
4.4.1.1 Tissue Culture-Dependent Plant Transformation ..... 142 4.4.1.2 Tissue Culture-Independent Plant Transformation .. 143
4.4.2Biolistic Transformation and Chloroplast Genetic Engineering...144 4.4.3Other Means of Plant Transformation ........................................ 145
4.5 Post-Transformation Steps in Developing Transgenic Plants .............. 146 4.5.1 Selection of the Modi„ed Plant Cells and Regeneration .......... 147 4.5.2 Evaluation and Characterization of Transgene Prior to
Commercialization ........................................................................ 148 4.5.3Transgene Regulation for Commercialization........................... 148
4.6 Plant Trait Modi„cation through Genetic Transformation .................. 149 4.6.1 Herbicide Tolerance ....................................................................... 157 4.6.2 Insect and Disease Resistance ...................................................... 158 4.6.3Quality Improvement .................................................................... 159 4.6.4Abiotic Stress Tolerance ................................................................ 160
4.7 Conclusions and Future Prospects .......................................................... 161 References ............................................................................................................. 162
increase in food grain production to agreat extent (Godfray et al., 2010), but this increase may not be suf„cient to keep with the pace of rising world population.Additionally, the diminishing agricultural resources (land, water) and the calamity of climatic change have been considered to negatively impact the agricultural production (Swaminathan and Kesavan, 2012). Thus, the threat alarming in current scenario is the global food and nutritional insecurity,especially in the developing countries. The adoption of ef„cient agriculturaltechnologies is considered one of the major approaches to meet the global food and nutritional security. Although criticized and debated widely, genetic engineering is serving as one of the important tools for crop improvement with respect to its rapidity, precision, andenvironment-friendly nature. These bene„cial features of plant genetic engineering have helped this techniqueto emerge as one of the alternative tools over the traditional breeding method for genetic improvement of crops in terms of improving nutritional quality and productivity. Genetic transformation has thus acquired astatus of modern-day tool for molecular breeding of crops.
