Biotechnology in the breeding of ornamental geophytes

Plant breeding of ornamental geophytes has grown into an important field in the last decades. It is estimated that about 85,000-99,000 ornamental plant species are existing throughout the world currently and these include both wild and cultivated species. Understanding the inheritance of genetic traits has accelerated modern ornamental breeding. Additionally, biotechnological approaches such as cytogenetics, marker-assisted selection, tissue culture techniques, mutation breeding, genetic transformation, cluster regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)Cas9 system, etc. have significantly contributed to the ornamental breeding program. Here we investigate principles and examples of such modern approaches in the production of ornamental cultivars.