Binucleation to breed new plant species adaptable to their environments.

Classical plant breeding approaches may fall short to breed new plant species of high environmental and ecological interests. Biotechnological and genetic manipulations, on the other hand, may hold more effective capabilities to circumvent the limitations of sexual incompatibility and conventional breeding programs. Given that plant cells encompass multiple copies of organellar genomes (mitochondrial and plastidial genomes), an important question could be raised about whether an artificial attempt to duplicate the nuclear genome might also be conceivable through a binucleation approach (generating plant cells with 2 nuclei from 2 different plant species) for potential production of new polyploidies that would characterize new plant species. Since the complexities of plant genomes are the result of multiple genome duplications, an artificial binucleation approach would thus be of some interest to eventually varying plant genomes and producing new polyploidy from related or distal plant species. Here, I discuss the potentiality of such an approach to engineer binucleated plant cells as a germ of new plant species to fulfill some environmental applications such as increasing the biodiversity and breeding new species adaptable to harsh environmental stresses and increasing green surfaces to reduce atmospheric pollutions in arid lands with poor vegetation.

Toward breeding new land-sea plant hybrid species irrigable with seawater for dry regions.

A plant species growing in sea or coastal saltmarsh is greatly tolerant to high concentrations of salts, and a plant species growing in desert or dry regions is highly tolerant to drought. Breeding a new plant hybrid species from both species by means of cellular grafting, genome fusion or nuclear transfer would generate, at least in theory, a hybrid plant species that should be strongly tolerant to harsh aridity and salinity and would be potentially irrigable with seawater. Such prospective species can be used for example as a fodder, biofuel crop or stabilizer species to protect soil from wind erosion and sandy storms in dry regions. Breeding such species would change the surface of the world and help to solve major challenges of starvation, malnutrition and poverty. Here, I propose potential approaches that would be worthy of investigation toward this purpose.

Legado imperecedero de un botánico costarricense singular: -Jorge Gómez Laurito (1947-2014)-

The life and professional work of the Costa Rican botanist Jorge Gómez Laurito (1947-2014) are here depicted. His 91 scientific publications and 50 new plant taxa (including a family, a genus, and 48 species) represent a long-lasting legacy. The description and publication of Ticodendraceae was his most notable professional achievement. Rev. Biol. Trop. 62 (4): 1261-1272. Epub 2014 December 01.

Aquí se relata la vida y se analiza la obra profesional del botánico costarricense Jorge Gómez Laurito (1947-2014). Su legado más perdurable son 91 publicaciones científicas y 50 taxa nuevos de plantas (una familia, un género y 48 especies). La descripción y publicación de Ticodendraceae fue su mayor logro profesional.