Genetic engineering of cereal crop plants:a review

Many aspects of basic and applied problems in plant biology can be investigated by transformation techniques. In dicotyledonous species, the ability to generate transgenic plants provides the tools for an understanding of plant gene function and regulation as well as for the directed transfer of genes of agronomic interest. For many dicotyledonous plants Agrobacterium tumefaciens can be routinely used to introduce foreign DNA into their genome. However, cereals seem to be recalcitrant to Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. In cereals, many efforts have been made in recent years to establish reliable transformation techniques. Several transformation techniques have been developed but to date only three methods have been found to be suitable for obtaining transgenic cereals: transformation of totipotent protoplasts, particle bombardment of regenerable tissues and, more recently, tissue electroporation. The current state of transformation methods used for cereals will be reviewed.