ISHS Acta Horticulturae 618: XXVI International Horticultural Congress: Environmental Stress and Horticulture Crops
THE DEVELOPMENT OF MULTIPLE STRESS-RESISTANT CAULIFLOWER USING MUTAGENESIS IN CONJUNCTION WITH A MICROSHOOT TISSUE CULTURE TECHNIQUE |
| Authors: | M.P. Fuller, M.H.I. Eed |
| Keywords: | Proline, frost, salt, hydroxyproline, cauliflower, tissue culture, mutagenesis, NMU, NEU |
| Abstract:
The tolerance of crop plants to salinity and drought is crucial in dryland and semi-dryland agriculture in eastern Mediterranean regions. In other regions tolerance to frost is important, especially during early spring growth. Resistance to stress is known to be multi-allelic and is often negatively correlated with yield factors. Thus, progress by conventional plant breeding is often slow or non-rewarding. Other methods of manipulating stress tolerance are now being sought, including mutagenesis and tissue culture selection and transgenesis. This paper reports the success of one system of mutagenesis of cauliflower. Cauliflower microshoots were prepared following the protocol of to produce over 20,000 microshoots per experiment. Microshoots were treated with the chemical mutagens N-nitroso-N-ethylurea and N-Nitroso-N-methyl-urea and then selected for resistance to hydroxyproline. Following selection, shoots were grown in vitro and subsequently weaned to in-vivo conditions, grown on and seeded. Selected and control plants were assessed for proline content, hydroxyproline resistance, salt resistance and frost resistance. Proline was significantly elevated in most selections whilst maintained in-vitro but levels fell when plants were regenerated although levels were still above those of the controls. The selected plants showed a range of tolerance levels to the 3 stresses assessed and cross resistance was common. The most salt-resistant plants were also more frost-tolerant. Assessment of the inheritance of the resistance traits is still in progress. | |
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