Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Biotechnology
Marc De Loose
1
* and Ann Depicker
2
1
Department of Plant Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Ghent
University, and Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Research
(ILVO), Merelbeke, Belgium;
2
Department of Plant Biotechnology
and Bioinformatics, Ghent University, and Department of Plant
Systems Biology, VIB, Ghent, Belgium
in Plant Breeding
For more information, we refer the
reader, at the end of this chapter, to some
selected topics covering this exciting area of
plant research and technology in much
greater detail (e.g. Chrispeels and Sadava,
2003; Slater
et al
., 2003; Yunbi, 2010;
Altman and Hasegawa, 2011).
Plant biotechnology is a general term
describing a research domain, covering a
broad spectrum of methodologies and tech-
niques. Over the last decades, the output of
the activities in this domain have resulted in
an exponential increase of knowledge on the
biological, biochemical and physiological
processes of plant growth and development.
h is knowledge, in combination with the
development of new breeding strategies and
agricultural technologies, has led over the
past 50 years to an enormous increase in
crop yield and improvement in quality.
Plant biotechnology, sometimes also
referred to as green biotechnology, is often
perceived as a synonym for genetically
modii ed (GM) plants, or transgenic plants.
However, plant biotechnology is much
broader than the applications of genetic
modii cation, and in fact it is a continuum of
dif erent techniques and research domains,
ranging from mutagenesis, organ and tissue
culture and the use of molecular markers in
breeding to transgenesis. In general, all
these techniques in one way or another have
resulted in broadening the deployable pool
of useful genetic variation for the breeder,
and transgenesis ultimately has the potential
of an unlimited creation of genetic variation.
Genetic variation is needed to enable new
properties to be added to existing plant
varieties in order to obtain new varieties
that better suit the needs of society, farmers,
industry and/or consumers. In the past, for
the selection of plants and new traits, the
breeder was restricted to the natural
variation within the gene pool of crossable
plants. Gene transfer and recombination
between plant traits can be achieved by
cross-hybridization after pollination (Fig.
2.1). However, with increasing phylogenetic
distance, this way of gene transfer is rare
or even impossible. Mutagenesis, making
use of chemical agents, ultraviolet (UV)
irradiation or isotope treatments, resulted
in the random induction of mutations in the
genome, leading to plants with modii ed
phenotypes and added variability, although
mostly a result of loss of function. Time-
consuming screening of high numbers of
