ABSTRACT
In order to improve crop plants in terms of their yield, drought resistance, pest resistance, nutritional value, etc.,modern agriculture has relied upon plant genetic engineering. Since the advent of recombinant DNA technology, several tools have been used for genetic transformations in plants such as Agrobacterium tumefaciens,virus-mediated gene transfer, direct gene transfer systems such as electroporation, particle gun, microinjectionand chemical methods. All these traditional methods lack specificity and the transgenes are integrated atrandom sites in the plant DNA. Recently novel techniques for gene targeting have evolved such as engineerednucleases such as Zinc Finger Nucleases, Transcription Activator like effector nucleases, Clustered regularinterspaced short palindromic repeats. Other advances include improvement in tools for delivery of geneediting components which include carrier proteins, and carbon nanotubes. The present review focuses on thelatest techniques for target specific gene delivery in plants, their expression and future directions in plantbiotechnology