- [137] Glycine max 152,218 [138] Gossypium barbadense 160,317 [139] Gossypium hirsutum 160,301 [140] Helianthus annuus 151,104 [141] Hordeum vulgare, Sorghum bicolor - [142] Lycopersicon esculentum 155,460 [21] Manihot esculenta - [143] Morus indica 156,599 [144] Musa acuminata - [145] Nicotiana tabacum 155,943 [146] Oryza sativa 134,551 [15] Oryza nivara 134,494 [16] Phaseolus vulgaris 150,285 [147] Saccharum officinarum 141,182 [18] Solanum tuberosu 155,298 [148] Spinacia oleracea 150,725 [149] Triticum aestivum 134,545 [19, 20] Vitis vinifera 160,928 [150] Zea mays 22,784 [17] Jatropha curcas 163,856 [151] Vigna radiata 151,271 [22] More recently, a method for plastid transformation in eggplant (Solanum melongena L.) has been reported with pPRV111A plastid expression vector carrying the aadA gene encoding aminoglycoside 300-adenylyltransferase [26] . The authors believe that this may open up exciting possibilities to introduce and express novel genes in the engineered plants via plastid transformation for agronomic or pharmaceutical traits. Up to date, plastid transformation has been extended to many other higher plants, such as Arabidopsis thaliana [39] , potato [40, 41] , tomato [1, 42] , Lesquerella fendleri, a kind of oilseed Brassicaceae [43] , oilseed rape, [38, 44] , petunia [45] , lettuce [46] , soybean [47] , cotton [48] , carrot [49] , rice [50] , poplar [51] , tobacco, [28, 52, 53] , mulberry , [54] and eggplant [26] (see review written by Wang et al. [3] ).