ISHS Acta Horticulturae 812: III International Symposium on Acclimatization and Establishment of Micropropagated Plants
USE OF BIOTECHNOLOGIES FOR CONSERVING PLANT BIODIVERSITY |
| Author: | F. Engelmann |
| Keywords: | in vitro collecting, slow growth storage, cryopreservation, germplasm conservation |
| Abstract:
In vitro techniques have numerous applications for collecting, propagation and conservation of plant biodiversity. In vitro collecting techniques allow introducing in vitro under field conditions explants from recalcitrant seed and vegetatively propagated species. In vitro culture techniques ensure the production and rapid, large scale multiplication of disease-free material. The use of in vitro culture techniques is of great interest for the conservation of: i) genetic resources of recalcitrant seed and vegetatively propagated species; ii) biotechnology products such as elite genotypes which are multiplied on a large scale in production laboratories and plant materials with special attributes, e.g. metabolite-producing cell lines and genetically engineered material; and iii) rare and endangered plant species. Medium-term conservation is achieved by reducing the growth of the plant material, thus increasing the intervals between subcultures. For long-term conservation, cryopreservation (liquid nitrogen,-196°C) allows to store plant material without modification or alteration for extended time spans, protected from contaminations and with limited maintenance. Slow growth storage protocols have been developed for numerous plant species. They are routinely employed for medium-term conservation of a large number of materials, both from temperate and from tropical origin. Cryopreservation is well advanced for vegetatively propagated species and there is an increasing number of cases where the techniques are ready for large scale experimentation. Research is much less advanced for recalcitrant seed species due to some of their characteristics including their very high sensitivity to desiccation, their structural complexity and their heterogeneity in terms of developmental stage and water content at maturity. There are, nevertheless, various technical approaches to explore in order to develop cryopreservation techniques for a larger number of recalcitrant seed species. Even though the routine use of cryopreservation is still limited, the number of examples where cryopreservation is used on a large scale is increasing steadily. | |
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