Plant biotechnology in Asia - Past, present and future

Plant biotechnology including plant tissue culture is the most important science to rescue human beings from the crisis of biosphere of the earth which they will face in the 21st century. Global area other than Asia of trangenic crops increased more than 16 times from 1996 to 1998. In Asian countries, micropropagation using tissue culture techniques has been well developed and has contributed to agricultural production. Although researches on levels of laboratory and test field trial of transgenic crops have been performed actively in some Asian countries, areas of growing transgenic crops are still small in Asia countries except in China. In this paper, the status of plant biotechnology in global and Asian countries are reviewed and the future prospect of plant biotechnology in Asia and roles of Korean and Japanese plant scientists in it are discussed.