Nuclear Techniques and in Vitro Culture for Plant Improvement

Proceedings of a symposium organized by the IAEA and FAO, Vienna, 1923 August 1985. The symposium examined the usefulness for plant breeding purposes of somaclonal variation, i.e. the occurrence of mutations during in vitro culture with or without the application of ionizing radiation or other mutagens. Another issue was finding ways and means of maintaining the genetic integrity of plants under in vitro conditions, such integrity being of vital importance if in vitro techniques are to be used to propagate virus-free clones of economically important plants, or to preserve germplasm in gene banks. In vitro culture techniques considerably accelerate the plant breeding cycle. This factor and the advantage of using haploids derived from another culture were also discussed at the symposium.