Frontiers in Bioscience-Scholar (FBS) is published by IMR Press from Volume 13 Issue 1 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
Biotechnological improvement of nutritional and therapeutic value of cultivated potato
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Genetic engineering is recognized as a powerful tool for altering the genetic characteristic of crop plants. Genetic engineering has tremendous potential in developing improved potato varieties with desired agronomic traits and has been utilized for improvement of several crop plants including potato to enhance essential amino acid, protein and lipids/carbohydrates contents as well to improve stress tolerance. The pathway engineering of amino acid revealed dramatic changes in essential amino acid content and protein quality. Similarly, the vitamin pathway engineering of potato has been proved to enhance the vitamin content with increased cellular antioxidant activities. Secondary metabolites such as flavonoids have also been altered through the genetic engineering of potato. This review provides detailed reports on the advances made in genetic transformation of potato for enrichment in its nutritional and therapeutic value by an increase in functional secondary metabolites, carbohydrate, essential amino acids, proteins, lipids, vitamins and edible vaccines.