Abstract
Plant transformation technology plays an ever-increasing role in improving crop plant traits and addressing research questions. In recent years, a number of important patents on plant transgenic technologies have been published. These patents represent significant new progresses, many representing novel approaches in the field of plant transgenic technology. This review highlights selected as well as the most significant advancements made mostly within the past 2 years in plant transgenic research. These advancements include the improvements of plant transformation systems, development of new plant selectable markers, engineering for plant stress tolerance, production of vaccines in transgenic plants, etc. Of these, the engineering for plant stress tolerance accounts for a high percentage of the transgenic field of inventions. Some results are drastic and unexpected, having a great potential in their applications towards a wider range of plant species. This review also tries to avoid terms and languages pertaining to the patent and legal documents to ease readings.
Keywords: Agrobacterium, T-DNA, transformation, selectable marker, stress tolerance, transgenic plant, vaccine