Molecular breeding of water lily: engineering cold stress tolerance into tropical water lily

Abstract

Genetics: The crop that came in from the cold Pioneering work in the genetic modification of water lilies lays the foundation for engineering more robust strains of this agriculturally valuable crop. Tropical water lilies are used to manufacture products including tea, food and essential oils, but their cultivation is limited by sensitivity to cold. Researchers led by Fei Chen at Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University have developed a genetic engineering procedure for introducing favorable new traits into these plants, offering an efficient alternative to labor-intensive crossbreeding procedures. As an initial demonstration, the researchers engineered tropical water lilies with a gene that confers enhanced cold tolerance, allowing the plants to survive winter temperatures that would otherwise prove inhospitable. This process should accelerate development of lilies that grow in a more diverse range of climates, and enable more extensive genomic analysis of this crop.