TILLING moves beyond functional genomics into crop improvement

Transgenic methods have been successfully applied to trait improvement in a number of crops. However, reverse genetics studies by transgenic means are not practical in many commercially important crops, hampering investigations into gene function and the development of novel and improved cultivars. A nontransgenic method for reverse genetics called Targeting Induced Local Lesions IN Genomes (TILLING) has been developed as a method for inducing and identifying novel genetic variation, and has been demonstrated in the model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Recently, TILLING has been extended to the improvement of crop plants and shows great promise as a general method for both functional genomics and modulation of key traits in diverse crops.