It is a group of methods for introducing a transgene into a plant genome without passing through the tissue-culture and regeneration step that conventional Agrobacterium-mediated transformation relies on. Instead, the transformation agent is delivered directly to living plant tissue in situ, in planta, such as an embryo during imbibition or an axillary meristem after wounding. The motivation is that tissue culture is slow, labour-intensive, and works poorly on many elite or recalcitrant genotypes, so avoiding it broadens which lines and species can be transformed at all.

This dataset ranks 16 assignees across 26 records, with the leading assignee holding 6 records — more than double the count at fifth place. The ranking includes both corporate filers, such as agricultural biotechnology companies, and individually named inventors, some of whom appear together as repeated co-assignee pairs. It is the complete ranking this dataset returns, not a filtered top-tier list, so the tail includes several single-record entrants.

Patent publication typically lags the actual filing date by around 18 months, so any year close to the data cut-off will always understate true filing activity. In this dataset the leading assignees all show 0 filings in the latest tracked year, which is consistent with that lag rather than a genuine halt in research. The peak filing year so far in this dataset is 2020, with 5 records.

Embryo imbibition with Agrobacterium and axillary meristem wounding are the two routes with the most-cited records in this dataset, including filings dating back to the mid-2000s that still anchor much of the field's vocabulary. Nearly every record in scope also carries a C12N genetic-engineering classification, and over three-quarters carry an A01H plant-breeding classification, showing the field is defined almost entirely by the overlap of those two disciplines rather than by a wide spread of distinct technical branches.

Facility-requirement reduction claims and computational or data-driven selection of transformation targets show thin coverage in this dataset — only one record carries a G06F digital-data-processing classification, for example. Germline-transmission verification and peptide-based delivery chemistry (C07K, 15.4% of records) also look under-claimed relative to the core embryo and meristem delivery methods. None of this guarantees novelty on its own; it only shows where this particular search string finds less prior art, so a proper freedom-to-operate check against a broader search is still necessary before filing.