Because of the characteristics of rapid growth, high pulp yield, and high fiber quality, tropical Acacia species has become a favorite fiber source in the pulp and paper industries. To reduce the required energy and CO2 emission in the production of pulp and paper, the tree improvement program of tropical Acacia is necessary. Tropical Acacia species including A. mangium, A. auriculiformis, A. crassicarpa, and their hybrids have been improved using conventional breeding methods so far, but there are several drawbacks by conventional breeding of tropical Acacia. First, because tropical Acacia are cross-pollinated species, the elite trees generated using conventional breeding are still genetically diverse, which is not benefited in commercial wood production. Second, the desirable traits such as modified lignin content and/or biotic stress resistant in Acacia are difficult to obtain using conventional breeding methods. Third, although tropical Acacia is fast for flowering in tree species, but still needs 3–4 years to bloom. In contrast, transgenic technology is an important and very efficient system to overcome the above drawbacks. For example, in poplar species, only one year is enough for generating many transgenic lines and actually many transgenic poplar lines with reduced lignin content were produced.
In this project, to apply transgenic technology to tropical Acacia species, we establish the regeneration and transgenic protocol for tropical Acacia. So far, several reports on transgenic and regeneration systems on tropical Acacia have been reported, but the efficiency is quite low. Our aim is to improve the efficiency of transformation and regeneration suitable for research and development.
