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Use of breeding to customise characteristics of medicinal and aromatic plants to postharvest processing requirements Friedrich Pank Federal Centre for Breeding Research on Cultivated Plants, Institute of Horticultural Crops, Quedlinburg, Germany Abstract Purpose of review: Medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) constitute only a small portion of agricultural produce. Literature is rare and scattered in numerous different journals. The aims of this review are: to highlight the capability of breeding for adapting the crude plant material to postharvest processing requirements; to emphasise the most common breeding methods; and to derive conclusions on the use of breeding for improving the postharvest properties of MAPs. Main findings: Use of breeding to adapt MAP material to postharvest processing requirements is still in its initial stage. Most of the current investigations are aimed at improving the content of essential constituents, while other important breeding aims are considered only marginally. Conventional methods prevail in MAP breeding for the following reasons: (1) good success can already be achieved by using simple selection procedures due to the high natural variability in the majority of these species; (2) contemporary biotechnological breeding methods are expensive; and (3) consumers often reject herbal drugs that originate from genetically modified plants – nevertheless, some research projects are running in this field. Currently, the most important breeding methods are selection in natural populations, combination and hybrid breeding, breeding of synthetic varieties, induced mutation and clone breeding. Some effective solutions (eg, the use of markers and rationalising the methods for trait assessment) are available for improving selection procedures. Directions for future research: Breeding is one of the key factors for advancing the phytopharmaceutical branch in the next years. Requirements of the plant material, in terms of its suitability for postharvest processing, and the breeding aims should be defined. Research also needs to investigate how the breeding aims can be implemented in the most efficient way. This requires studies on the available natural variability of the concerning characteristics and their genetics, methods of generating new variability, effective selection methods, and high performance, low cost and reliable methods for trait assessment. Keywords: medicinal and aromatic plants; breeding; postharvest requirements Stewart Postharvest Review 2007, 4:1 Published online 01 August 2007 doi: 10.2212/spr.2007.4.1 |