Abstract
Since the 2008 oil crisis, the need for alternative sources of biofuels is becoming more and more apparent. Jatropha is considered as one of the important candidate sources of renewable energy because it is a non-edible plant and it contains high amounts of oil that is of good quality. Furthermore, Jatropha is said to be drought tolerant and can be cultivated in marginal lands, thus avoiding competition with food crops for agricultural lands. However, disappointing result in Jatropha plantations caused a decline in the general interest toward this biofuel crop. Since Jatropha has not been domesticated, there will be more possibilities for varietal improvement either by conventional breeding or genetic modification. Several traits that need improvement in Jatropha include toxicity, low yield, and low tolerance to abiotic stress. The development of transgenic Jatropha will be a more practical way to address the growing need for a cheap and renewable source of energy. Moreover, Jatropha is a suitable model plant to study drought tolerance and its applicability for cultivation in arid land. This chapter presents the current progress in the development of transgenic Jatropha with special emphasis on gene discovery and transformation methods.
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Cartagena, J. (2017). Towards Varietal Improvement of Jatropha by Genetic Transformation. In: Tsuchimoto, S. (eds) The Jatropha Genome. Compendium of Plant Genomes. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49653-5_11
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