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Limitations to the Use of Somaclonal Variation in Crop Improvement

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Book cover Somaclonal Variations and Crop Improvement

Part of the book series: Advances in Agricultural Biotechnology ((AABI,volume 20))

Abstract

Somaclonal variation in the major crop plants, rice, wheat, maize, barley, triticale, sugarcane, potato and a few forage grasses is reviewed. Reported somaclonal variants include chlorophyll-deficient plants, and those with changed morphology, single-gene mutations, polyploidy, aneuploidy, chromosomal re-arrangements, modified yield, quality and disease resistance, and occasionally novel variants not present in the natural gene pools. Somaclonal variation results from both dominant and recessive mutations. The type and frequency of variants suggests that somaclonal variation is akin to non-directed, random mutagenesis which generates a large amount of unwanted variation. Consequently, most of somaclonal variation is either useless or of limited use in direct varietal upgrading. However, somaclonal variants are easier to detect than those in conventional mutagenesis. It is concluded that the development of in-vitro selection procedures is essential to sieve out useful from useless variation to overcome the constraints of somaclonal variation in breeding programs.

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  1. Agricultural Institute, Oak Park Research Centre, Carlow, Ireland

    B. S. Ahloowalia

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© 1986 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Ahloowalia, B.S. (1986). Limitations to the Use of Somaclonal Variation in Crop Improvement. In: Somaclonal Variations and Crop Improvement. Advances in Agricultural Biotechnology, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7733-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7733-5_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8295-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-015-7733-5

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