Development of stress tolerant transgenomic traits in sugar beet through biotechnological application

Abstract

Sugar beet (Beta vulgaris L.) has emerged as an alternative to sugarcane. It is mainly utilized for sugar extraction and has significant industrial value with great nutritional impact. Different kinds of biotic and abiotic stresses are considered to be major barriers for sugar beet cultivation. As per the current scenario, every year sugar beet production suffers huge yield losses due to various stresses. The conventional breeding technique is a time-consuming lengthy procedure which can be replaced by a genetic transformation technique to bring new transgenic traits within a short period of time. Sugar beet has proven to be excellent sample material for in vitro culture of haploid plants, protoplast culture, somaclonal variation, and single cell culture, among others. Agrobacterium mediated and PEG-mediated transformations are the most effective genomic transformations in the case of sugar beet. Development of new traits in terms of fungus/virus, pest/nematode tolerance, herbicide and salt tolerance are the most frequently expected traits in the current scenario of sugar beet production. Potential transgenic plants are viable alternatives to traditional expression systems for end product (protein) development with more accuracy. So, transgenic production through genome editing/base editing is presently considered to be one of the best tools for sugar beet tolerant traits development. Food safety and environmental impacts are two major concerns of genetic transformation in sugar beet and need to be appropriately screened for public health acceptability.