Amjad Husaini

Strawberry: Transgenics for Stresses Amjad Husaini

There are three major issues for Agriculture worldwide: 1) Shrinking land resources & desertification of land causing uneconomical crop yields; 2) Need for diversification towards high value crops for vibrant agricultural economies; 3) Global warming & Climate change making it less feasible to continue crop production in certain regions. As strawberry is a salt sensitive crop, but is highly remunerative with a huge postharvest processing potential fetching highest returns/ time/ space/ investment, development of abiotic stress (water & salt stress) tolerant strawberry plants is imperative. Various aspects of Agrobacterium- mediated gene transfer were studied and transgenic plants developed. High efficiency somatic embryogenesis system was developed to accelerate introduction of improved clones into commercial production, as somatic embryos can be encapsulated & handled as artificial seeds. A cost effective technology for hardening of the plantlets, by the use of certain mycorrhizal fungi that help in reducing the transplantation shock to the in vitro developed plantlets when transferred to field condition, was also developed.