**Meet the editors**

Muhammad Sarwar Khan is currently serving as Professor and Director at the Center of Agricultural Biochemistry and Biotechnology (CABB), University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan. He has earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, UK. Afterward, he was awarded the Rockefeller foundation fellowship under the Rice Biotechnology Program for Developing

Countries to carry out research at the Waksman Institute of Microbiology, Rutgers, USA. His first of its kind research was published in Nature Biotechnology. Dr. Khan has served as the founding group leader of Chloroplast Transformation and Biopharming, and as the head of Biotech Interdisciplinary Division at NIBGE. Dr. Khan has supervised more than 100 Ph.D., M-Phil students, and researchers.

He has published 50 articles in high impact journals, including Nature, and he is the author of several book chapters and books. Dr. Khan has developed transgenic sugarcane, resistant to top borers and tolerant to a herbicide, which was approved by the National Biosafety Committee (NBC) for field trials in 2006–2007. This was the first proposal of endogenously developed transgenic crops, approved by the NBC in Pakistan. Dr. Khan has also pioneered plastid transformation in rice and sugarcane, recalcitrant plant species. He has also knocked out a number of genes from the chloroplast genome of higher plants. His current research interests include the development of edible-marker-carrying transgenics, cost-effective therapeutics and edible vaccines for animals. Dr. Khan has received prestigious national and international awards and is on the Editorial Boards of international scientific journals.

Kauser Abdulla Malik, currently working as Professor and Dean of Postgraduate Studies at Forman Christian College (a Chartered University), Lahore, received his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Aston, UK. He is an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow and worked at the Institute of Soil Biochemistry in Braunschweig, Germany. In Pakistan he worked at the Nuclear Institute

for Agriculture and Biology and later as founder Director of the National Institute for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering at Faisalabad. Dr. Malik has been the Chairman of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, a member of the Biosciences at Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, and a member of the Food and Agri of Planning Commission of Pakistan. He has been a Higher Education Commission Distinguished National Professor since 2005. He was awarded the ISESCO Prize in Biology in 1997. Dr. Malik's areas of research are in molecular biology of plant–microbe interactions and metagenomics and transgenics for biofortification and biopharmaceuticals with over 250 peer-reviewed publications, seven patents, five edited books, and several book chapters. He has been awarded three civil awards for his contributions to science by the presidents of Pakistan. He is an elected Fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences and the World Academy of Sciences.

Contents

**Preface VII**

**Novel Traits 1**

Phetole Mangena

**Genome Editing 41**

**via Biolistic Methods 99**

**Modified Crops 115**

Chapter 1 **Introductory Chapter: Transgenics—Crops Tailored for**

Chapter 2 **The Role of Plant Genotype, Culture Medium and**

**Genetic Transformation 17**

Muhammad Sarwar Khan and Kauser Abdulla Malik

Chapter 3 **Understanding CRISPR/Cas9: A Magnificent Tool for Plant**

Chapter 4 **Technical Advances in Chloroplast Biotechnology 61**

Chapter 5 **Understanding Plant Responses to Drought and Salt Stresses: Advances and Challenges in "Omics" Approaches 75** Mohammad Sayyar Khan and Mudassar Nawaz Khan

Chapter 6 **Genetic Improvement of Tropical and Subtropical Fruit Trees**

Chapter 7 **Molecular Approaches to Address Intended and Unintended Effects and Substantial Equivalence of Genetically**

Mousa Mousavi and Mohsen Brajeh Fard

Lerato B.T. Matsaunyane and Ian A. Dubery

**Agrobacterium on Soybean Plantlets Regeneration during**

Jorge Ricaño-Rodríguez, Jorge Suárez-Medellin, Eliezer Cocoletzi Vásquez, José M. Ramos-Prado and Enrique Hipólito-Romero

Muhammad Sarwar Khan, Ghulam Mustafa and Faiz Ahmad Joyia
