Coffee (Coffea spp.) is one of the world's most valuable agricultural export commodities produced by small‐scale farmers. Its germplasm, which holds useful traits for crop improvement, has traditionally been conserved in field genebanks, which presents many challenges for conservation. New techniques of in vitro and cryopreservation have been developed to improve the long‐term conservation of coffee. But a question remains as to whether these new techniques are more cost effective than field collections and more efficient at reducing genetic erosion. This study compared the costs of maintaining one of the world's largest coffee field collections with those of establishing a coffee cryo‐collection at the Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica. The results indicate that cryopreservation costs less (in perpetuity per accession) than conservation in field genebanks. A comparative analysis of the costs of both methods showed that the more accessions there are in cryopreservation storage, the lower the per‐accession cost. In addition to cost, the study examined the advantages of cryopreservation over field collection and showed that for species that are difficult to conserve using seeds, and that can only be conserved as live plants, cryopreservation may be the method of choice for long‐term conservation of genetic diversity.

Unnecessary weed growth in sugarcane fields forces plants to compete for nutrients and sunlight for survival, which most often leads to significant yield losses. As chemical herbicides cannot differentiate between crop plants and weeds, the development of herbicide-tolerant crops is anticipated. Four sugarcane varieties, CPF-234, CPF-213, HSF-240, and CPF-246, were used to develop glyphosate herbicide tolerance. A glyphosate-tolerant gene of 1368 bp cloned directionally under the 35S promoter with the β-glucuronidase (GUS) reporter gene was used as the transgene. Through the biolistic transformation of sugarcane, calli of all cultivars were transformed with glyphosate-tolerant gene constructs. Efficient regeneration conditions were optimized on 1.5-2.5 mg/L kinetin, 1.5-2.5 mg/L 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP), and 1 mg/L gibberellic acid (GA 3 ). The transformants exhibited the best shoot regeneration on a medium containing 2 mg/L kinetin, 2 mg/L BAP, 2 mg/L GA 3 , and 1 mg/L indole-3-acetic acid. Based on initial screenings through GUS assay, the transformation efficiency was 22%, 32%, 17%, and 13% for cultivars 246, 234, 213, and 240, respectively. In transformed sugarcane plants, the transgene of 1368 bp was amplified. ELISA with gene-specific coated monoclonal IgG confirmed the transgene protein expression. It was revealed that all acclimatized transgenic sugarcane plants survived the glyphosate spray application of 900 mL/0.404 ha, except for the control nontransformed plants. However, at spray application of 1100 mL/0.404 ha, transgenic plants having the transgene protein OD of 0.2 to 1.0 did not survive, while those that had a transgene protein OD range of between 1.0 and 2.0 did. In addition, weeds growing alongside transgenic sugarcane plants turned brown and subsequently died at glyphosate spray applications of both 900 and 1100 mL/0.404 ha.

Maize is the 3rd major crop grown all over the world that fulfills the needs of millions of people. Various biotic and abiotic factors caused reduction in grain yield of maize, among them weeds show most adverse effects. Objective of this study was to develop glyphosate resistance maize for developing maize hybrids and synthetic varieties with high grain and fodder yield potential. Glyphosate is a broad spectrum herbicide and resistance of crop against the herbicide, allows post emergence application, which otherwise is impossible. Higher GTG crude protein (479.94?g/g) was recorded for CIL 194-975 plant. The plant CIL 194-1786 showed higher expression level of GTG protein, indicated that transformation efficiency was better for line CIL-194 than CIL-123. GTGene stably integrated to the genome of the maize lines CIL-194 and CIL-123, these transformed lines showed more ability to cope with herbicides as compared with non-transformed lines in greenhouse and field trials. The transgenic lines were sown in field and data was recorded for various morpho-physiological, grain, fodder yield and quality traits. Data was statistically analyzed to check significance of results at <0.05% probability level. It was concluded from heritability, genetic advance, stepwise multiple linear regression, principle component and factor analysis that the selection on the basis of grain yield, green fodder yield, stem diameter, cob weight, stomata conductance, chlorophyll contents, photosynthetic rate, cob length, grain protein, grain oil, embryo percentage and grain starch may be fruitful keeping in view as the major contributing traits to improve crop yield and production. It was suggested that the transgenic lines for glyphosate resistance may be used to develop transgenic hybrids and synthetic varieties with higher grain yield with high quality.

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