MEDIUM- AND LONG-TERM CONSERVATION AND SAFE INTERNATIONAL EXCHANGE OF GERMPLASM FROM FOOD AND CASH TROPICAL CROPS

In this review, five plants studied in IRD were taken into account.
Some belongs to food crops (cassava, yam), or cash crops (coffee, oil palm), or to both (coconut). To facilitate the safe international exchange of these categories of tropical crops, development of in vitro facilities allows conservation of germplasm, disease and virus-free, for medium-term or long-term duration.
Slow growth is feasible, in routine application, on coffee, cassava and yam.
Most of the different tropical crops did not allow conventional seed storage strategies.
Some have recalcitrant seeds with no dormancy (coconut), others tolerate desiccation but not low temperature (coffee, oil palm), others are species propagated vegetatively (cassava, yam). Cryopreservation success depends of the techniques adapted according to the organ and the plant concerned: encapsulation/dehydration with caulinary meristem (coffee, cassava, yam, coconut), vitrification with shoot-tip (cassava, yam), desiccation and precooling with somatic (oil palm), zygotic embryo (coffee, coconut, oil palm) and desiccated seed (coffee) or desiccated kernel (oil palm). In vitro plant material is the safest way for international exchange.
It is carried out: 1) routinely on cassava (in vitro plantlets) and yam (in vitro plantlets, microtuberization, encapsulated apices), on coconut (zygotic embryos), 2) occasionally, on oil palm (somatic embryos, in vitro plantlets), on coffee (in vitro plantlets, cryopreserved seeds).

IV International Symposium on In Vitro Culture and Horticultural Breeding

B. Malaurie

cassava, coconut, coffee, cryopreservation, oil palm, slow growth, yam

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2001.560.7