PLANT BIOTECHNOLOGY IN 21ST CENTURY: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES

Abstract

The present review mentions the relevance and future prospect of plant biotechnology in agricultural economics and plant breeding industry.So far, 700 plant breeding companies around the world have been applying plant, cell, tissue and organ culture technique to breed thousands

of disease-free seedlings per year, including medicinal, fruit, food, woody plants and kinds of flower. The application makes a better profit than  using traditional method production and tackles both food security and climate change. In Vietnam, 30 million seedlings are produced by more than 100 laboratories using these modern techniques every year. There are number of hightech private enterprises in Dalat which are producing about 80 % of the total seedlings. Moreover, the modern techniques being used are required for plant-breeding programs. They are genetic transformation, protoplast fusion, single cell culture, haploid plant, etc. The application of these tecgniques has been serving multi purposessuch as anti-stress, accumulation of secondary metabolites and acclimatization. For those reasons, it is necessary to gain the

knowledge of plant physiology, biochemistry, taxonomy and molecular biology, etc. This review describes the important role of plant biotechnologyin ‘Green Revolution’ and in the Socio - economic Development of both the world and Vietnam