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Abstract
Species within the genus Populus are among the fastest growing trees in regions with a temperate climate. Not only are they an integral component of ecosystems, but they are also grown commercially for fuel, fiber, and forest products in rural areas of the world. In the late 1970s, they were designated as a bioenergy crop by the U.S. Department of Energy, as a result of research following the oil embargo. Populus species also serve as model trees for plant molecular biology research. In this article, we will review recent progress in the genetic improvement of Populus, considering both classical breeding and genetic engineering for bioenergy, as well as in using transgenics to elucidate gene functionality. A perspective for future improvement of Populus via functional genomics will also be presented.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on this manuscript. We also apologize for being unable to cite other important research papers but, alas, we were constrained by space. The research in Cheng's lab has been supported by the Consortium for Plant Biotechnology Research, Inc., the BioEnergy Science Center, which is a U.S. Department of Energy Bioenergy Research Center supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science, and by Tennessee Agricultural Experiment Station.