Biotechnology and Plant Breeding Perspectives

Contents: I. Vision: 1. Biotechnology and plant breeding perspectives for food, energy and sustainability/Manfred Kern. II. Scope of biotechnology and plant breeding: 2. The impact of biotechnology and globalization processes on plant breeding and seed business/Andrzej Aniol. 3. Potentials and possibilities of biotechnology and plant breeding in feeding and fuelling the world population/Nasir El Bassam. 4. Socio-economic and safety reasons for acceptance of GMO-products/Gerhard Wenzel. 5. Breeding without GMO-European perspective/Stawomir Sowa, Anna Linkiewicz Magdalena Urawska-Zaifert and Janusz Zimny. 6. Socio-economic and safety reasons of rejection of biotechnological and GMO products/Katarzyna Lisowska. II. Genetic resources: 7. The perennial wild species Avena macrostachya as a genetic source for improvement of winter hardiness in winter oat for cultivation in Poland/Bogustaw Lapi ski, Maciej Kata Zopfia Nakielna, Eric Jellen and David P. Livingston. 8. Miscanthus gene pool investigation in Poland: a review/Sandra Cichorz and Maria Go Ka. 9. Morphological cytogenetic and molecular characterization of selected wild beets from the Genebank-an example of the integrated model approach for plant passport data supplementation/Anna Litwiniec, Iwona J Drzeiczy and Maria Go Ka.III. Crop improvement. IV. Tissue culture and transgenics. V. Genomics and breeding for resistance and quality. VI. Biomass and environment. Until recently plant breeders have relied primarily on classical tools to develop new crop cultivars providing a raw plant-derived material for further processing. With elapsing time plant breeding is becoming modernized and perceived as a multi-disciplinary and coordinated process in which a large number of tools and elements of conventional breeding techniques, bioinformatics, molecular genetics, molecular biology and genetic engineering are being utilized and integrated. With the advent of biotechnology, breeders started to incorporate rapidly DNA technology tools in their breeding work. In recognition of the current state of methods and their application, this conference addresses both classical and biotechnological tools used for germplasm enhancement and plant breeding. Economics called also green economics of plant breeding and plant products is barely touched in this conference, though it is huge in turnover terms of associated industries, employment and trade. It is estimated that in EU-27 there are around 17 million farms with more than doubled number of workforce. (jacket).…