PRESENT DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF IN VITRO CULTURE TECHNIQUES FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PLANT GENETIC RESOURCES

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) endangered species; iii) elite genotypes which are multiplied on a large scale in production laboratories; iv) plant material with special attributes, e.g. metabolite-producing cell lines and genetically engineered material.

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 the plant material without modification or alteration for extended time spans, protected from contaminations and with limited maintenance.

Slow growth techniques have been developed for numerous species but their routine use is still restricted to a limited number of crop species.
They should become more widely applied once their flexibility, simplicity and practicality are clearly demonstrated.
Routine use of cryopreservation is mostly restricted to the conservation of cell lines in research laboratories.
However, in recent years, simple freezing techniques have been developed for differentiated materials such as apices and embryos, and the number of cases where they can be considered operational is increasing.
Additional research is still needed to experiment existing cryopreservation techniques on a large scale in a genebank context and to develop protocols for additional species.

III International Symposium on In Vitro Culture and Horticultural Breeding

F. Engelmann

collecting, slow growth, cryopreservation, recalcitrant species, vegetatively propagated species, elite genotypes, transformed lines

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1997.447.96