Biotechnology Strategies For Blueberry and Cherry

The use of biotechnology to improve specialty crops has fallen far behind the agronomic crops due mainly to technical barriers as well as the lack of investment. The Plant Biotechnology Resource and Outreach Center (PBROC) of Michigan State University (MSU) is dedicated todeveloping biotechnology tools for the unique needs of Michigan agriculture to ensure healthier, more productive specialty crops. Over the past decade, the PBROC has made many solid advancements including: 1) greatly improving the transformation efficiency of blueberry, celery, and cherry, 2) developing efficient transformation systems for biofuel crops (rutabaga, canola, and switch grass), 3) producing the first transgenic blueberry carrying herbicide resistance, 4) developing transgenic blueberry with cold tolerance using an intragenic transformation strategy, 5) obtaining a blueberry insertion mutant with low chilling requirement, and 6) engineering cherry rootstocks with resistance to Prunus necrotic ring spot virus through RNAi-mediatedsilencing. As a proof of concept, these advancements have demonstrated the potential application of genetic transformation for improvement of specialty crops.