Transformation of Wheat from the Simple Product of a Particular Patch of Prairie into a "Golden River of Grain"

Transformation of Wheat from the Simple Product of a Particular Patch of Prairie into a "Golden River of Grain"

Introduction

Wheat is grown on approximately 17% of the world's cultivatable land (over 200 million hectares) and is one of the most important sources of calories and protein in the human diet. It also supplies essential vitamins and minerals such as vitamins B and E, magnesium and phosphorous, as well as fibre. It is the only cereal which produces gluten allowing the production of leavened bread and is the major ingredient in other goods such as biscuits and cakes, pasta, noodles and some breakfast cereal products. In addition, wheat-derived ingredients are added to a wide range of processed foods to confer specific functional properties. Low-grade wheat and industrial wheat by-products are used for animal feed. This paper discusses the transformation of wheat from the simple product of a particular patch of prairie into a "golden river of grain" in a concise and comprehensive way.

Transformation of Wheat from the Simple Product of a Particular Patch of Prairie into a "Golden River of Grain"

In words f (Cronon, (1992) since the first report of wheat transformation in the early 1990s, genetic engineering of wheat has evolved rapidly. Several laboratories worldwide have reported the production of fertile transgenic wheat plants using a variety of methods. While there are several innovative and promising approaches for wheat transformation using different explants as targets for transformation, different methods of transformation, and different selection schemes, the most common approach to wheat transformation is the bombardment of tissue derived from immature embryos followed by selection based on resistance to the bar gene. Even with all these successful reports, hurdles still exist for this ...