Genetic engineering of poplar: Current achievements and future goals

Abstract

Global biomass demand for industrial applications is ever increasing especially in biofuels and pulp industries. Poplar is likely to have great biological advantages over the other forest trees which include small genome size, large number of species, rapid juvenile growth, ease of clonal propagation, easy recovery of genetic transformants, and available genome draft. Wide and sustainable farming of rapidly growing trees such as poplars may supplement to attain the requirement of renewable resources. This chapter covers the progress in both basic and applied studies in poplar genetic tailoring. Certain advices are given for future direction of the research in poplar genetic tailoring so as to achieve the needs of environmental cleansing system and the timber industries. Emerging new thoughts for designing wood improvement approaches are discussed.