Cryopreservation: A Strategy Technique for Safe Preservation of Genetically Transformed Plant Materials

The world population now is 6.7 billion and is predicted to reach 9 billion by 2050 [1]. Such a rapid growing population has tremendously increased the challenge for food security. Obviously, it is impossible for traditional agriculture to ensure the food security, while plant biotechnology offers considerable potential to realize this goal [2]. Commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops started in 1996. Since then, cultivation of GM crops has rapidly increased and the total cultivation areas of GM crops had reached 134 million ha by 2009 [3]. Over the last 15 years, great benefits have been brought to sustainable agriculture by commercial cultivation of genetically modified (GM) crops [2]. Further development of new GM crops will with no doubt contribute to meeting the requirements for food by the increasing population [3]. In vitro plant cell cultures have been for a long time used for producing natural products including proteins [4]. Expression of foreign gene (s) in plant cell cultures by geneti