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Genomics and Applied Biology
,
2012, Vol.3 No.3, 22
-
26
http://gab.sophiapublisher.com
A Review Open Access
An Overview of Biotechnological Approaches for Crop Plant Improvement
Siddra Ijaz
,
Iqrar Ahmad Rana
Centre of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Faisalabad, Faisalabad, 38040, Pakistan
Corresponding author:
Authors
Genomics and Applied Biology 2012, Vol.3 No.3 doi: 10.5376/gab.2012.03.0003
Received: 04 Dec., 2012
Accepted: 17 Dec., 2012
Published: 26 Dec., 2012
Copyright
© 2012 Siddra and Iqrar., This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Preferred citation for this article:
Siddra and Iqrar, 2012, An overview of biotechnological approaches for crop plant improvement, Genomics and Applied Biology, 2012, Vol.3 No.3, 22-26
(doi: 10.3969/gab.2012.03.0003)
Abstract
Conventional crop breeding is being restricted due to the use of only closely related species and it takes many generations to
initiate significant improvement. Biotechnology is getting a great interest as basic techniques for tailoring crop plants as per specific
requirement. It allows researchers to shorten this time and this imitate the evolutionary process but in highly selective way. As a
biotechnological approach, genetic manipulation strategy is something like tearing out a page of the instruction manual for one organism
and gluing it into the instruction manual of another organism. Around the globe, this emerging science is playing an imperative role to
help agricultural productivity. In this review, biotechnological approaches that are commonly used for the improvement of crop plants are
highlighted and briefly described.
Keywords
Biotechnological approach; Crop improvement; Conventional crop breeding
Introduction
The expected crash of performance of world trade
organization, industrial liberalization and free market
economy has formed extraordinary risk for various
countries to protract even at low economic profile.
Therefore it may not be matter-of-fact to rely on
industrial sector for economic boost and expansion.
Under this state of affairs it becomes indispensable to
strengthen other possible assets like agriculture.
Agriculture is one of the promising sectors which offers
marvelous potential for sustainable growth and can play
a key role in helping to sanctuary the economy of the
country. Furthermore, a threatening increase in the
world population and limited food supply strained and
anxious biologists to introduce and advance agriculture
management and modern technologies along with
conventional practices to attain highest possible crop
productivity.
With the development of plant molecular biology,
genetic transformation has become one of the innermost
issues in molecular breeding (Vasil, 1994). Lack of a
stout and vigorous regeneration system to regenerate
transformed plants at a satisfactory rate is still the key
factor which seriously restricts the enhancement of
crops through genetic transformation (Popelka and
Altpeter, 2003). Establishment of putative regeneration
system, target genome, a candidate gene, and a vector to
carry the gene, modification of foreign DNA to enhance
its expression, transformed cell identification and
characterization of aspirant plants at the molecular
levels are the pre-requisite for genetic transformation
(Sharma et al., 2000).
Methods for site specific integration in nuclear genome
of plants have not been developed but
in situ
introduction of small mutation in known gene has been
described by Zhu et al (1999) and Beetham et al (1999).
Biological and physical parameters optimization may
increases the effectiveness of these processes (Jefferson,
1987). Stable transformation efficiency and increased
transient expression can be attained by particles
bombardment (Finer et al., 1992) of target tissue treated
with osmoticum (Vain et al., 1993).
The intricacy in the development of gene transfer
methods may be due to the deficiency in various cellular
responses essential for transformation (Potrykus, 1985).
Genetic engineering offers an additional source of
disparity through which breeders can develop new
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