title: Biotechnology tools in agriculture: recent patents involving soybean, corn and sugarcane.
abstract: The technological opportunities opened up by biotechnology in agriculture are diverse, including plant breeding, the partial or total relief of pesticides chemicals usage, the improvement of soil fertility, the improvement of the quality attributes of various foods. Specifically, various tricks of biotechnology can be used for higher seed yield, resistance to diseases and insects, better stems and roots, tolerance to drought and heat, and better agronomic quality. A number of recent works considerably widen the potential of plant biotechnology where transformation methods and studies of molecular genomics have been described. For example, transformation techniques and search for new selectable markers involving biolistic technique, gene transfer technique using the soil bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens, selection technique based on the use of mannose, utilization of genes promoting endogenous hormone production under the control of chemical stimulants, further more, engineering the nuclear genome without antibiotic resistance genes and engineering the plastid genome. We are presenting in this paper some of the recent patents on methods and techniques involving genes coding proteins and breeding techniques with possible agronomic applicability on crops economically important, such as soybean, corn and sugarcane.
authors.affiliation: Laboratório de Biofísica, Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Caixa Postal 131, 74001-970, Goiânia, GO, Brazil. daianehansen31@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Daiane
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Hansen
authors.forename: Adriana M
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Nakahata
authors.forename: Mitsue
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Haraguchi
authors.forename: Antonio
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Alonso
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000379:methods*; D001709:Biotechnology / Q000379:methods*; D018556:Crops, Agricultural / Q000235:genetics*; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D010330:Patents as Topic; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified; D031786:Saccharum / Q000235:genetics; D013025:Glycine max / Q000235:genetics; D014170:Transformation, Genetic; D014481:United States; D003313:Zea mays / Q000235:genetics