PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY AND ITS APPLICATION IN HORTICULTURE IN CHINA

Z.H. X
With rapid economic development, the total acreages of fruit trees, vegetables and various ornamental plants in China are greatly expanded, now ranking number one in the world. Plant tissue culture techniques have been extensively applied in horticulture, such as clonal propagation combined with virus-free technique in potato, banana, grape tree, apple, pear and different ornamental plants, and embryo rescue technique for obtaining hybrid plants in kiwi fruit and peach. For plant molecular biology and transgenic techniques, main priority has been placed on rice, since it has small genome and its importance in agriculture, that makes rice a major model species. Until Aug. 2003, 1044 applications were accepted for evaluation of biosafety, and 777 were approved for field trials, covering over 30 plant species, such as rice, maize, cotton, rapeseed, potato, soybean and poplar tree. Transgenic tomato (delaying ripening and virus resistance), petunia (changing flower color), sweet pepper (virus resistance) and cotton (insect resistance) have been released for field production. Total acreage of transgenic plants reaches 2.8 million ha in 2003. More genes of agronomic significance were cloned, and molecular markers identified, those would be very useful to plant breeding.
X, Z.H. (2006). PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY AND ITS APPLICATION IN HORTICULTURE IN CHINA. Acta Hortic. 725, 49-54
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2006.725.1
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2006.725.1
plant biotechnology, horticulture, China
English

Acta Horticulturae