Articles
PRESENT AND FUTURE POTENTIAL OF PINEAPPLE BIOTECHNOLOGY
Article number
666_1
Pages
23 – 28
Language
English
Abstract
Pineapple is an important crop for many countries in Central and South America as well as the Asia-Pacific region.
Even though the history of the crop dates to pre-Colombian times there is a remarkable lack of commercial varieties with a single cultivar Smooth Cayenne dominating the whole industry.
Variety improvement is a very difficult task for pineapple breeders and very little progress has been made in this respect when compared to other crops more suitable to classical breeding approaches.
This special characteristic makes pineapple specially suited for genetic engineering approaches that can transfer specific traits from other species into pineapple.
In this presentation past and present efforts to use biotechnological methods for the improvement of pineapple will be reviewed.
On-going biotechnology projects include control of flowering and control of blackheart disease.
The development of pineapple biotechnology, as with any other crop, is dependent on the availability of a number of molecular tools, which will also be discussed.
For pineapple, these tools can be roughly classified into three different categories: (1) availability of useful genes (2) availability of suitable promoters and (3) availability of an efficient transformation method.
Even though the history of the crop dates to pre-Colombian times there is a remarkable lack of commercial varieties with a single cultivar Smooth Cayenne dominating the whole industry.
Variety improvement is a very difficult task for pineapple breeders and very little progress has been made in this respect when compared to other crops more suitable to classical breeding approaches.
This special characteristic makes pineapple specially suited for genetic engineering approaches that can transfer specific traits from other species into pineapple.
In this presentation past and present efforts to use biotechnological methods for the improvement of pineapple will be reviewed.
On-going biotechnology projects include control of flowering and control of blackheart disease.
The development of pineapple biotechnology, as with any other crop, is dependent on the availability of a number of molecular tools, which will also be discussed.
For pineapple, these tools can be roughly classified into three different categories: (1) availability of useful genes (2) availability of suitable promoters and (3) availability of an efficient transformation method.
Publication
Authors
J.R. Botella, D.J. Fairbairn
Keywords
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