Oilseed Brassicas

This chapter on oilseed brassicas contains three sections: Introduction, Development of Transgenic Oilseed Brassicas, and Future Roadmap. In the first section, after a brief summary on the history, origin, distribution, and the biology of Brassicas, we review in detail the development history of oilseed canola and their production in major growing countries. We then review the traditional breeding efforts for genetic improvements of the crop and the rationale for transgenic breeding. In the second section, we review in detail the transgenic traits developed, including resistance to herbicides, insects, diseases and stresses and the modification of seed quality traits, followed by a review of the transformation strategies, selection of transformed tissues and regeneration of whole plants. Lastly, in the third section, we discuss the future directions to further improve the productivity of the crop to meet the pressing market needs, particularly the opportunities provided by the knowledge generated/being generated by genomics.