Binucleation to breed new plant species adaptable to their environments

Abstract

Classical plant breeding approaches may fall short to breed new plant species of high environmental and ecological interests. Biotechnological and genetic manipulations, on the other hand, may hold more effective capabilities to circumvent the limitations of sexual incompatibility and conventional breeding programs. Given that plant cells encompass multiple copies of organellar genomes (mitochondrial and plastidial genomes), an important question could be raised about whether an artificial attempt to duplicate the nuclear genome might also be conceivable through a binucleation approach (generating plant cells with 2 nuclei from 2 different plant species) for potential production of new polyploidies that would characterize new plant species. Since the complexities of plant genomes are the result of multiple genome duplications, an artificial binucleation approach would thus be of some interest to eventually varying plant genomes and producing new polyploidy from related or distal plant species. Here, I discuss the potentiality of such an approach to engineer binucleated plant cells as a germ of new plant species to fulfill some environmental applications such as increasing the biodiversity and breeding new species adaptable to harsh environmental stresses and increasing green surfaces to reduce atmospheric pollutions in arid lands with poor vegetation

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“…Urban and vertical farming systems are potential solutions that could offer many environmental and agricultural benefits [1]. Other solutions may include developing floating photovoltaic-based agriculture in the sea [2] and breeding new polyploid crops [3] or land-sea hybrid plant species potentially irrigable with seawater [4,5]. Sun and seawater surrounding large deserts and drylands in the world offer another important advantage that could be exploited in natural ecological systems to restore wildlife biodiversity and provide sources of food for many native desert fauna and flora.…”

Toward future photovoltaic-based agriculture in sea

“…Among the potential solutions to alleviate such challenges is to opt for vertical farming [1] and to breed new plant species potentially irrigable with seawater [2] [3]. Investors and researchers should also address any other potential approaches that would help developing sustainable farming systems to minimize the burden on freshwater and to increase plant productivity particularly in dry and arid lands where water cherishes.…”