Transgenic plants resistant to insects - limitations and perspectives

Abstract

The investments on pest, plant diseases and weed control using chemicals, increased from US$ 850 million in 1960 to US$ 17,4 billion in 1986. This trend has been reduced in the last four years at the rate of 2.4%/year, probably as a result of the social movements for environment preservation. In addition this trend will also be influenced in the future by modern methods of molecular biology which allow the genetic engineering of entomopathogenic microorganisms and the production of transgenic plants with those characteristics. The research on these area are now limited by two main factors: the difficulties in the manipulation of grasses and legumes concerning the tissue culture and the transformation and regeneration of plants; the small availability of genes from B. thuringiensis which produce entomocide toxines mainly to Coleoptera. In this study we analyse these limitations as well as the possibilities of overcoming these dificulties.