About this Research Topic
The genome of several fruit crops is already available and other sequencing projects are in progress. Furthermore, transcriptome studies conducted on some fruit crops have provided insights into the molecular mechanisms controlling important physiological processes such as fruit development and response to biotic stress. All these genomic and transcriptomic data represent a challenge and an opportunity for molecular breeding of fruit crops. Conventional breeding of fruit crops which are generally clonally propagated by grafting, is a long and complex process hindered by high heterozygosity, slow growth, long juvenile periods. Genetic engineering can circumvent many of the constrains associated with conventional breeding. However, for most of the fruit crops and cultivars efficient transformation protocols are not available, mainly due to recalcitrance to regeneration /transformation from adult tissues.
The aim of this proposal is to present recent advances in genetically engineering transformation methods applied to fruit crops including transient transformation protocols for gene function discovery and new biotechnologies such as those based on genetic modification of rootstocks and cisgenesis and intragenesis.
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