Articles
Seed priming and germination of Musa crop wild relatives with a view to establishing field genebanks
Article number
1384_25
Pages
191 – 198
Language
English
Abstract
Exploiting resistant sources of crop wild relatives (CWR) is one of the approaches to resistance breeding in crop plants.
The major constraint in involving CWR in banana breeding is the lack of their phenotypic and genotypic data and often accurate passport data.
These are dependent on their access to systematic collections, conservation and characterization.
Most of the Musa species are not characterized to date for two reasons, namely in situ characterization is not possible due to access in the wild, and ex situ characterization needs their establishment in genebanks.
The ICAR – National Research Centre for Banana in India, with 25 years of learning, has successfully established the first Musa QR coded CWR genebank in the field with 51 wild Musa species and types utilized for characterization, screening and distant hybridizations.
Pre-breeding is the bridge to introgress valuable traits from CWR into cultivated varieties for which the characterization for the desirable traits is warranted.
The establishment of CWR in a field gene bank is highly challenging due to the poor germination/survival of seeds/suckers collected from their natural habitats.
This needs information on sucker behaviour in transit and establishment success, fruit and seed details on maturity, germination, establishment and regeneration.
The problems and prospects of establishing a field gene bank for the CWR of Musa is discussed in this paper.
The major constraint in involving CWR in banana breeding is the lack of their phenotypic and genotypic data and often accurate passport data.
These are dependent on their access to systematic collections, conservation and characterization.
Most of the Musa species are not characterized to date for two reasons, namely in situ characterization is not possible due to access in the wild, and ex situ characterization needs their establishment in genebanks.
The ICAR – National Research Centre for Banana in India, with 25 years of learning, has successfully established the first Musa QR coded CWR genebank in the field with 51 wild Musa species and types utilized for characterization, screening and distant hybridizations.
Pre-breeding is the bridge to introgress valuable traits from CWR into cultivated varieties for which the characterization for the desirable traits is warranted.
The establishment of CWR in a field gene bank is highly challenging due to the poor germination/survival of seeds/suckers collected from their natural habitats.
This needs information on sucker behaviour in transit and establishment success, fruit and seed details on maturity, germination, establishment and regeneration.
The problems and prospects of establishing a field gene bank for the CWR of Musa is discussed in this paper.
Authors
U. Subbaraya, S.M. Somasundaram, B. Suthanthiram, D. Palani, K. Sathiamoorthy, S. Swaminathan
Keywords
CWR, Musa spp., characterization, seed germination, field genebank, breeding
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