A breakthrough in cotton transformation technology

A new cotton transformation method was developed by Ge and colleagues at Institute of Cotton Research of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and this work was published in a recent issue of the Journal of Integrative Plant Biology (Ge et al. 2023; https://doi.org/10.1111/jipb.13427). This method is a milestone progress in the development of cotton transformation technologies, as it can be used to transform different genotypes and species of cotton such as Gossypium hirsutum, Gossypium barbadense, and Gossypium arboreum. This method is fast, user friendly, and the transformation efficiency is equivalent to or superior to other cotton transformation methods. Ge et al. named this technique the shoot apical meristem (SAM) cells-mediated transformation system (SAMT), which can also be applied to transform other dicot crop species such as soybean and cucumber. The invention of the SAMT method represents a seminal achievement in crop transformation technology, and it will facilitate genetic improvement in elite cotton varieties as well as in other dicot crops that have been hitherto recalcitrant to transformation.