Thrust of future efforts in breeding and genetic engineering

Abstract

A review is made on the impact of biotechnology in assisting plant breeding to increase oil palm yield. The recent advances in biotechnology offer new scope for breeding and selection. The relevance of biotechnological techniques such as tissues culture, somaclonal variation, protoplast fusion and genetic engineering to oil palm is examined and compared with those done and the major oilseed competitors such as soybean, cotton seed, sunflower and repseed. In oil palm clonal propagination is progressing towards commercialisation. Somaclonal variation has regenerated variants with higher oleic acid thereby demonstrating the ability to reduce the long breeding cycles from 30 years for producing a new variety to about six to seven years. The progress with protoplast fusion is slow. Genetic engineering is still at its infancy and is confined to molecular finger printing techniques of restricted fragment length polymorphisms (RLFP) and isozyme analysis. The paper calls for a multidisciplinary approach in solving the problems encountered in the adoption of biotechnology in oil palm breeding.