ISSN 2329-9835
International Journal of Diseases and Disorders ISSN 2329-9835 Vol. 7 (4), pp. 001-009, April, 2019. © International Scholars Journals
Review
Biotechnology approaches to developing herbicide tolerance/selectivity in crops
Richard M.S. Mulwa1* and Lydia M. Mwanza1
1Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 258 ERML Bldg, 1201 W. Gregory Dr. Urbana IL 61801, USA.
Accepted 07 January, 2019
Abstract
The use of herbicides has revolutionized weed control in many crop production systems. However, with the increasing development of weed resistances to many popular selective herbicides, the need has arisen to rethink the application of chemical weed control. Approaches to maintain the efficiency of chemical weed control include the discovery of new herbicide target sites in plants and the discovery/ synthesis of new, more potent herbicidal molecules. However, these approaches are expensive to execute, take considerably long times to succeed and may lead to increased chemical loads in the environment. Since many existing broad-spectrum herbicides are still effective, an alternative strategy adopted to ensure the safe use of broad-spectrum herbicides in a wide range of crops is the application of biotechnological techniques to engineer crop selectivity to these herbicides. In this review we summarize efforts being made to develop crop herbicide selectivity using biotechnology.
Key words: Biotechnology, herbicide resistance, cell culture, mutagenesis, genetic transformation.