Domestication of ornamental plants: Breeding innovations and molecular breakthroughs to bring wild into limelight

Abstract

Wild ornamental plants offer a rich reservoir of genetic resources, essential for developing new, improved cultivars. Domestication of wild ornamental plant species transforms them into distinct cultivars with enhanced attributes, imperative for enhancing the diversity, adaptability of cultivated plants and addressing the evolving demands of the floriculture industry. This review offers a novel perspective on the domestication of wild ornamentals by highlighting advancements in breeding methods, genomics, genetic engineering, and cutting-edge technologies like CRISPR-Cas9. The review underscores the importance of breeding techniques such as selection, hybridization, and QTL mapping in developing ornamental plants with desirable traits, providing a strong foundation for successful domestication. Also, it emphasizes the role of tissue culture techniques in accelerating the breeding process under controlled conditions, ensuring rapid propagation and consistency in plant quality. A significant focus is placed on the use of advanced genomic approaches, including de novo assembly and annotation, comparative genomics and transcriptomics, pangenomics, and epigenomics, in identifying and characterizing domestication related genes. The review also discusses the transformative potential of genetic engineering in developing superior ornamental cultivars with enhanced traits. Furthermore, the application of CRISPR-Cas9 is highlighted as a powerful tool for de novo domestication, enabling precise gene modifications that can accelerate the development of ornamental plants with improved aesthetics, stress resistance, and other desirable attributes. Taken together, integrating these innovative tools represent a significant leap forward, offering new possibilities for domestication of wild ornamentals.