Engineering plants for future: Tools and options

Abstract

The availability of efficient techniques for genetic engineering of plants across taxonomic boundaries is a must to address the challenges posed by the global growth of the human population. This will shorten the time and accelerate the entire process needed for inclusion of novel traits in plants with potential to increase agricultural productivity, improved nutritional quality as well as processing characteristics. This mini-review summarizes current understanding, latest advancements and comparisons of various methods used to date to generate transgenic plants with a special focus on the biological model of gene delivery into plants. © 2008 Prof. H.S. Srivastava Foundation for Science and Society.