Abstract: | Cole crop vegetables (Brassica oleracea L.) are cool-season crops that include broccoli (B. oleracea Italica), cauliflower (B. oleracea Botrytis), and cabbage (B. oleracea Capitata). Brassica oleracea, convar. botrytis, var Italica, Fam. Brassicaceae (Cruciferae), is grown for its dark green inflorescences. Its English name derives from the Italian “brocco” and the Latin “bracchium”, which means arm or branch (Boswell, cited by Singh et al., 2004). Biotechnology is part of the broader field of genetic mapping, analysis and research called genomics. In contrast to earlier methods of plant breeding, the new techniques allowed a much wider set of traits to be introduced into plants, in a much shorter period of time. These included resistance to herbicides, pest resistance, cold and drought tolerance, tolerance to salt in soils, enhanced nutrition and vitamin content and many other traits. Brassica biotechnology includes organo¬genesis, somatic embryogenesis, microspore culture and doubled haploids, somatic cell fusion, molecular markers for genetic fidelity of in vitro-grown plants, marker-assisted selection, and transformtation. In the present mini-review we outline the main achievements presented by the literature on the main and more often employed techniques used as tools for amplifying classic breeding results. |
