CITRUS CYBRIDS: TRANSFER OF MICROCITRUS ORGANELLES INTO CITRUS CULTIVARS

Nucellar calli of Citrus and its related wild genus Microcitrus are the sources of protoplasts, which upon appropriate conditions, are able to divide and result in the respective true-to-type trees.
Applying the donor-recipient protoplast fusion technique we used Microcitrus protoplasts as donors of cytoplasmic organelles and either Rough lemon or Sour orange protoplasts as recipients.
Cybrid clonies and the subsequent cybrid plants were obtained having either Rough lemon or Sour orange morphological (nuclear coded) features.
As expected restriction analyses for mitochondrial DNAs from cybrids revealed novel patterns which differ from those of either of the fusion partners.
Southern blot hybridization indicated that in either type of the cybrid plants were homoplastomic.
Some plants contained Microcitrus chloroplasts while others contained the recipients chloroplasts.
Intergeneric cybridization between the genus Microcitrus and species from the genus Citrus can thus be achieved by the donor-recipient protoplast fusion.
The novel Citrus types are growing in the greenhouse for further evaluation.

I International Symposium on In Vitro Culture and Horticultural Breeding

A. Vardi, A. Frydman-Shani, E. Galun, P. Gonen, S. Bliechman

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1990.280.41