Transgenic Development in Horticulture Fruit Crops- A Review

Abstract

Fruits are known as “protective food" as they are rich in vitamins and minerals. However, abiotic and biotic stresses effect fruit production. Because of increased demand, many economically important fruit crops are needed to be improved. In past years, some efforts were made through conventional breeding. However, classical fruit breeding has had minor success in plant improvement and is restricted due to genetic erosion, long juvenile period, genetic drag and reproductive barriers limiting the transfer of favourable alleles from diverse genetic resources. There is an urgent need to accelerate crop improvement, which aimed to obtain unique plant traits. Several researches have been shown successful transgenic development in fruit crops. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation and regeneration of transgenic plants found successful in papaya. In Hawaii, Papaya ringspot virus provides practical control by virus coat protein transgenic papaya and expression of hepatitis B surface antigen in transgenic banana using agrobacterium-mediated transformation. In the recent advances in genetic engineering based on the introduction of transgenes and development of transgenic plant have been adopted successfully to improve crops yields and nutritional quality, but also for increase tolerance to various abiotic and biotic stresses. Agrobacterium-mediated transformation has a remarkable advantage over direct transformation method.