Production of Virus-Resistant Plants Through Transgenic Approaches

Abstract

Production of transgenic plants for virus resistance is one of the success stories of genetic engineering that produce long-lasting and protected virus resistance, enabling the production of crops at commercial level. Of the various transgenes, use of translatable or non-translatable regions of the virus genome is the most successful approaches for developing virus-resistant varieties (known as pathogen-derived resistance, PDR). Of the various virus sequences, coat protein gene is the most widely used to engineer transgenic resistance. Availability of reliable regeneration systems, gene constructs in appropriate vectors, plant transformation techniques, selection of transgenic plants, characterization and evaluation of transgenic plants for resistance and commercialization of the transgenic variety are the various steps in the production and commercialization of transgenic virus-resistant plants.