Pasture biotechnology - not as you know it

K.M. ELBOROUGH AND Z. HANLEY

Vialactia Biosciences (NZ) Ltd, P.O. Box 109185, Newmarket, Auckland, New Zealand

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NZSAP 2004 Abstract No. 25 Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production 64: 101-104

The breeding of improved varieties of agriculturally important species requires constant effort and innovation. The ways we in New Zealand use emerging technologies to maintain our low-cost, low-input, sustainable, pastoral agricultural systems are extremely important. When it comes to developing elite varieties and strains of ryegrass we have been, until very recently, disrupting much to achieve little: we rely on chance to find the right combinations of traits in our breeding lineages, whether animal germplasm or plants cultivars. The use of Cisgenics®, where heritable material is moved only within a species by either traditional or modern biotechnological means offers a better way for ryegrass breeding in line with a key principle of science and economics.

Keywords: NZSAPAB; Cisgenics; plant biotechnology; protoplast fusion; breeding; marker assisted breeding

Last Updated 8/07/2004