Biotechnological approaches for the improvement of Eucalyptus

Abstract

Forest trees have received relatively little attention as compared to crop species, even though biotechnological strategies could potentially have a greater impact on forestry and forest products. Eucalyptus is among the fastest-growing woody plants in the world and widely accepted for plantation forestry throughout the world due to its wide adaptability, extremely fast-growing nature, and most importantly excellent wood and fiber properties. Improvement of Eucalyptus by conventional breeding is constrained by long reproductive cycles, complex genetic characteristics, self-incompatibility, and a high degree of heterozygosity. Therefore, there is a requirement of developing faster methods of vegetative propagation for rapid cloning of superior germplasm and trait-based genetic improvement of selected clones for qualitative and quantitative tree improvement to suit the needs of end users. Over the last few years, considerable success has been achieved in the area of in vitro propagation as well as the genetic transformation of Eucalyptus. Furthermore, sequencing of the complete genome of Eucalyptus will strengthen various genomic approaches for the improvement of Eucalyptus. The present review presents a comprehensive account of the various in vitro propagation and genetic transformation techniques for the improvement of Eucalyptus.