DROPLET VITRIFICATION: THE FIRST GENERIC CRYOPRESERVATION PROTOCOL FOR ORGANIZED PLANT TISSUES?

Cryopreservation procedures are now available for about 150-200 different plant species, but until now for each species and tissue type, cryopreservation protocols needed to be empirically adapted in function of the natural frost/dehydration resistance of the species under investigation, explant size, explant type and water content.
Most of the work on cryopreservation of plants has been performed in the framework of academic studies and involves only one or a few genotypes.
Only few plant germplasm collections stored in liquid nitrogen currently exist but the number is increasing.
The unavailability of an efficient and robust cryopreservation protocol applicable to many plant species and diverse germplasm types is one of the major bottlenecks for the wide application of cryopreservation to plant germplasm.
Droplet vitrification is now one of the methods that receives much attention and is moreover on a large scale applied to germplasm collections of for example banana, potato and garlic.
The method is also now under investigation to be applied in collections from other plant species such as pelargonium, taro, ulluco and sweet potato.

I International Symposium on Cryopreservation in Horticultural Species

B. Panis, B. Piette, E. André, I. Van den houwe, R. Swennen

germplasm collections, PVS2, fast freezing, meristems, biodiversity, banana, Musa spp.

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2011.908.17