Progress in genetics of breeding for maize transformation ability

Maize (Zea mays) is the most widely grown crop grown and produced crop in the world. It is a foundational model for genomics and genetics. To meet the need of a growing population and climate change the current and future crop improvement efforts will comprise of the utilization of biotechnology-based approaches. This includes the functional analysis and discovery of agriculturally important genes for crop research and product development. Today, most crop genetic engineering systems use the transformation process. But there are limitations to the transformation process. The labor of creating transgenic events is the largest cost associated with the transformation production system. The culture process is the most time-consuming and has the highest labor cost of the system. Then once the trait is verified to be present the trait must be backcrossed into an elite line with better agronomic traits and good yield. The backcrossing process is time consuming and requires a large amount of greenhouse space. The major limitation of plant transformation is genotype dependency. To get more widely adoption of biotechnology and the transformation process for breeding it needs to become less expensive and time-consuming to produce transgenic lines. This can be achieved through discovery of the genetics behind callus formation and regeneration, so any elite line can be made transformable. The discovery of morphological genes like Bbm and Wus2 have made it possible to develop a genotype-independent transformation system in maize and other monocots