Sensitivity to, and accumulation of, cadmium in &lt;i&gt;Betula pendula&lt;/i&gt;, &lt;i&gt;Picea abies&lt;/i&gt;, and &lt;i&gt;Pinus sylvestris&lt;/i&gt; seedlings from different regions in Sweden

Österås, Ann Helén; Ekvall, Lars; Greger, Maria

doi:10.1139/cjb-78-11-1440

Cited by 11 publications

References 27 publications

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Birches

Lemmetyinen

Järvinen

Keinonen

et al. 2008

Compendium of Transgenic Crop Plants

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The birches are common trees and shrubs of the northern hemisphere. Economically, the most important species is the silver birch ( Betula pendula ), and its breeding started already in 1940s. To speed up breeding, new biotechnological approaches have been introduced, including marker‐assisted breeding, micropropagation, and gene transfer. Possibilities to improve wood quality and stress tolerance are now being studied by using these technologies. Several genes regulating flower development in birch have been isolated, and utilized in development of nonflowering and early‐flowering birches. The only biotechnological applications related to herbivore and fungal resistance so far appear to be the transformation of spider insecticidal peptide gene into Betula platyphylla , and of chitinase IV gene from sugar beet into silver birch. Attempts to modify lignin amount and composition have been made with two genes, but neither of these lead to expected alterations in lignin composition. Birch is quite tolerant to some toxic compounds found in contaminated soil, but so far no transgenic applications for phytoremediation have been reported. The recently established large expressed sequence tag (EST) library and birch oligonucleotide microarray chips will undoubtedly enable further genomic studies on birch and enhance its potential as a deciduous woody model plant.

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