Abstract:
The development of improved potato cultivars has been limited due to occasional difficulties in performing sexual crosses. The crop is vegetatively propagated and as such poses several problems for plant breeders. These include the high level of heterozygosity, no flowering, the common occurrence of pollen sterility, incompatibility, selection difficulties in the seedling and first clonal years, build-up of viruses, and difficulties in germplasm storage. The potato, however, is highly amenable to various tissue culture techniques. The genetic instability of cultured plant cells frequently produces sufficient variants (somaclonal variation) within a population without the need for artificial mutagenic treatment. Somaclonal variation provides an unexpectedly rich source of genetic variation among regenerated plants and can be exploited in mutant selection for crop improvement. The tendency of potatoes to undergo potentially valuable somatic changes in cell cultures is highly desirable for improving the crop. Somaclonal variation has already produced several agriculturally useful variants for various traits in potatoes, for example, improvement of tuber shape, yield, quality and uniformity, and disease, virus and nematode resistance. Therefore, somaclonal variation offers great promise to facilitate and expedite potato improvement and it is probable that the technique will be used widely in the future.
Page(s):
170-174
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Biologia, Volume: 44, Issue: 1--2, Year: 1998