Applications of Ionizing Radiation in Mutation Breeding

As a predicted result of increasing population worldwide, improvements in the breeding strategies in agriculture are valued as mandatory. The natural resources are limited, and due to the natural disasters like sudden and severe abiotic stress factors, excessive floods, etc., the production capacities are changed per year. In contrast, the yield potential should be significantly increased to cope with this problem. Despite rich genetic diversity, manipulation of the cultivars through alternative techniques such as mutation breeding becomes important. Radiation is proven as an effective method as a unique method to increase the genetic variability of the species. Gamma radiation is the most preferred physical mutagen by plant breeders. Several mutant varieties have been successfully introduced into commercial production by this method. Combinational use of in vitro tissue culture and mutation breeding methods makes a significant contribution to improve new crops. Large populations and the target mutations can be easily screened and identified by new methods. Marker assisted selection and advanced techniques such as microarray, next generation sequencing methods to detect a specific mutant in a large population will help to the plant breeders to use ionizing radiation efficiently in breeding programs

STIMULATION OF RAPID REGENERATION BY A MAGNETIC FIELD IN PAULOWNIA NODE CULTURES

In this study, the aim was to determine the effect of magnetic fields on regeneration of Paulownia node cultures. Paulownia tomentosa node cultures were used to generate explants and these explants were passed through a 2.9- 4.6-mT magnetic flux density 1 and 9 times at 2.2 and 19.8 seconds, respectively. Chlorophyll quantities, total RNA concentrations of shoots and shoot formation rates from control and treated explants were determined. While the shoot formation rate was 61.9% in the control group, this rate was increased in magnetic field experiments and shoot formation was 82.5% in the explants that were exposed to a magnetic field for a 2.2 second period. However, the regeneration percentage of the explants exposed to a MF for a period of 19.8 s was 45%. Chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and total chlorophyll contents of the 2.2 s group were increased in comparison to the control group. Total RNA concentrations of seedlings regenerated from treatment explants treated for 2.2 seconds significantly increased in comparison to the control (p<0.05). Our experiments show that the exposure duration to MFs is an important factor for plant tissue. MFs may be used in in vitro regeneration studies rapid and for a short time

Molecular Abiotic Stress Tolerans Strategies: From Genetic Engineering to Genome Editing Era

In last decades, plants were increasingly subjected to multiple environmental abiotic stress factors as never before due to their stationary nature. Excess urbanization following the intense industrial applications introduced combinations of abiotic stresses as heat, drought, salinity, heavy metals etc. to plants in various intensities. Technological advancements brought novel biotechnological tools to the abiotic stress tolerance area as an alternative to time and money consuming traditional crop breeding activities as well as they brought vast majority of the problem themselves. Discoveries of single gene (as osmoprotectant, detoxyfying enzyme, transporter protein genes etc.) and multi gene (biomolecule synthesis, heat shock protein, regulatory transcription factor and signal transduction genes etc.) targets through functional genomic approaches identified abiotic stress responsive genes through EST based cDNA micro and macro arrays. In nowadays, genetic engineering and genome editing tools are present to transfer genes among different species and modify these target genes in site specific, even single nuclotide specific manner. This present chapter will evaluate genomic engineering approaches and applications targeting these abiotic stress tolerance responsive mechanisms as well as future prospects of genome editing applications in this field

Transgenic Plants in Heat Stress Adaptation: Present Achievements and Prospects

Global warming, which was rhetorical in the previous century, is a preeminent issue in multiple scientific areas today. Global warming has increased the frequency of extreme high temperature events all around the globe and expanded heat zones from tropic areas through both poles and even changed frigid poles to temperate zones. In the terrestrial earth, plants are the major CO2 consumers. The emergence and evolution of plants on earth decreased the global temperatures dramatically from mid-Devonian to mid-Carboniferous Era; however, the human factors as industrialization were not in equation. Today, plants are still main actors of the nature-based solutions to global warming through afforestation and reforestation solutions. However, high temperature is a major deleterious abiotic stress for plant growth and productivity. Plant heat stress adaptation has been a focus of research for both environmental and agricultural purposes. Plant heat stress adaptation requires utilization of complex physiological traits and molecular networks combined. The present chapter summarizes recent progress in transgenic approach through five main targets as heat shock proteins, osmoprotectants, antioxidants, transcription factors, and miRNAs. Additionally, miscellaneous novel transgenic attempts from photosynthetic machinery to signal transduction cascades are included to cover different physiological, transcriptional, and post-transcriptional regulation of the plant heat responses

Next Generation of Transgenic Plants: From Farming to Pharming

The number of approaches related to recombinant protein production in plants is increasing rapidly day by day. Plant-based expression offers a safe, cost-effective, scalable, and potentially limitless way to rapidly produce recombinant proteins. Plant systems, which have significant advantages over animal and yeast recombinant protein production systems, are particularly promising for the large-scale production of antibodies and therapeutic proteins. Molecular pharming with transgenic plant systems become prominent among other production systems with its low cost, absence of human or animal pathogen contaminants, and the ability to use post-translational modifications such as glycosylation. The ability to produce recombinant pharmaceutical proteins in plant seeds, plant cells and various plant tissues such as hairy roots and leaves, through the stable transformation of the nuclear genome or transient expression, allows for the establishment of different production strategies. In particular, the rapid production of candidate proteins by transient expression, which eliminates the need for lengthy transformation and regeneration procedures, has made plants an attractive bioreactor for the production of pharmaceutical components. This chapter aimsto exhibit the current plant biotechnology applications and transgenic strategies used for the production of recombinant antibodies, antigens, therapeutic proteins and enzymes, which are used especially in the treatment of various diseases

Plant Abiotic Stress Factors: Current Challenges of Last Decades and Future Threats

All life forms, from the simplest to the most complicated, are inevitably exposed to altering environmental conditions in their natural habitats, gradually depending on their lifestyle. Unfavorable alterations drive these life forms either to avoidance or defense as a response. Most of the essential plant growth-promoting environmental factors can also turn out to be stress factors. Water as the most abundant molecule of all living cells can cause stress either in deficit as drought or in excess as waterlogging. Temperature is important for the maintenance of all biomolecules and metabolic reactions; hence, both low and high temperatures are deleterious stress factors. Even though the plants were exposed to various volcanic origin, heavy metals and pollutants and evolved molecular mechanisms during millions year of evolution, rapid urbanization, and industrial progress introduce brand new pollutants as micro- and nanoplastics as well as nanoparticles to plants like never before. This chapter defines and evaluates major environmental abiotic stress factors with an emphasis on the latest knowledge of molecular effects on plants. In addition, novel stress factors, such as nanoparticles and microplastics, are looked over as hot prospects for the future of plant abiotic stress areas