The production and uses of genetically transformed plants: concluding remarks

Abstract

This meeting at which the preceding collection of papers were presented occurred on the tenth anniversary of the development of techniques which have laid the foundation for modern plant biotechnology, namely the ability to transfer genes into plants and to direct their expression in appropriate cell types. The contributors have revealed many of the exciting and potentially important applications of gene transfer technology in crop plants arising from these earlier developments, and have also described new approaches which have engendered an ever-widening scope for crop improvement through the application of molecular biological methods. In the past ten years a wide variety of crop plants have been stably transformed, and it is clear that many of the major crops can now be transformed, although with widely different efficiencies.