Plant Tissue Culture and Transformation Techniques
Contents: Foreword. Editor\'s note. Introduction. 1. China--cotton genetic engineering and tissue culture developments/Reddy Naganagouda and Zhu Shuijin. 2. Egypt: development of transgenic wheat with improved salt and drought tolerance/Ahmed Bahelidin and Hala F. Eissa. 3. Egypt--use of genetic engineering approach to develop virus resistance for some plants belonging to different plant families/Atef Shoukry Sadik. 4. Egypt--genetic transformation of maize (Zea mays L.)/Shireen Aseem. 5. Egypt--tissue culture and transformation of potato/Taymour Nasr El Din. 6. Eritrea--genetic engineering/Tadesse Mehari. 7. India--present status, policy, and constrains in genetic engineering/Jeetendra Jaysing Solanki. 8. Indonesia--review on the role of biotechnology for food security/Lukita Devy. 9. Iran--status of agricultural biotechnology/M. Kafi. 10. Kenya--status of biotechnology research and development/C.N. Ngamau, M.G. Karembu and D. Otunge. 11. Kenya--present status, policies and constraints in areas related to plant biotechnology/Salome Mallowa Obura. 12. Malaysia--a brief report on biotechnology and genetic engineering/Z.A. Aziz. 13. Pakistan--present status, policies and constraints of biotechnology/Saghir Ahmed Sheikh. 14. Sri Lanka--present status of biotechnology/P. Aruni Weerasinghe. 15. Syria--current status and future prospective of agricultural biotechnology program at GCSAR/Nabila Ali Bacha. 16. Uganda--report on the present status policies and constraints to genetic engineering/Kyeyune Gerald Muwanga.
"This publications deals with various aspects of the genetic engineering--plant tissue culture and transformation techniques.
Due to their biological, ecological and geographic diversity, the demand for various horticultural crops is likely to increase manifold in the future and in order to meet such demand, there is an urgent need to concentrate on the research aspects for improvement of these crops. Plant tissue culture offers new tools to accomplish this objective.
Plant tissue culture is an important area of biotechnology, which is used for the propagation of problem-species, rapid propagation of high-value genotypes, production of secondary metabolites, etc. Tissue culture is an important step in developing new hybrids from distant parents and transgenics, and particularly cost-effective technology with palpable impact in vegetatively propagated plants, which is clearly visible in improved yields of cultivars incorporating genes from unexplored sources and improved germplasm, enhancement of quality parameters, and supply of disease-free clones of true-to-type planting materials. Plant tissue culture is the most rapid and efficacious way to speedy production of large volumes of identical plants for specific markets. Micropropagation is the quickest way for popularization of new varieties of horticultural crops where other methods of mass multiplication of genetically pure and homogenous planting materials are very slow. With the advent of transformation technology, it has become a useful tool to mass produce new plants with genetic material transferred from unrelated sources with the help of tissue culture.
The volume contains contributions by several authors highlighting the status of genetic engineering and plant tissue culture research and development programmes in various developing countries and case studies on a few economically important crops. The publication will be of immense value to the working scientists, institutions, policy makers, and all those bearing responsibility to develop, implement and intensify programmes in the related subjects in their respective countries. This book provides a good picture of the efforts being made and success already achieved in the Third World Countries at various levels of development striving to secure gains from the latest advances in science and technology." (jacket)
