Triticeae cereals

The Triticeae cereals comprise wheat, barley, rye and triticale. Together, these crops provide a major proportion of the food and feed produced and consumed worldwide. Biotechnological approaches to the improvement of Triticeae cereals may thus largely contribute to cope with the challenging future demands on agricultural production. This chapter provides comprehensive information on technologies for the generation and characterization of stably transgenic Triticeae plants and on available systems of transgene expression and targeted knock-down of endogenous genes. Further, transgenic approaches to the improvement of Triticeae crops are reviewed with particular emphasis on: (i) tolerance to abiotic stress such as drought, salinity and heavy metal toxicity, (ii) resistance to viral and fungal pathogens and pathogenic insects and (iii) grain quality features and the development of transgenic lines to produce valuable molecules for industrial and pharmaceutical use.