Affiliation |
Department of Science and Technology, Centre for Plant Biotechnology, HSCST, Haryana, CCSHAU Campus, Hisar, 125004, India, Email: ksubhash73@hotmail.com |
Abstracts |
India is the second largest producer of fruit plants after China. Mango, banana, citrus, guava, grape, pineapple, and apple are the major fruit plants grown in India. Apart from these, other fruits like papaya, ber, phalsa, sapota, annona, jackfruit, and pomegranate in the tropical and subtropical group and peach, apricot, pear, almond, walnut, and strawberry in the temperate group are also grown in a remarkable area. Propagation in fruit plants through seed is primarily done to raise rootstocks, which are required for grafted plants. Some of the fruit plants like papaya are propagated through seeds, but dormancy, poor germination, low seed viability, and adverse environment conditions are major limiting factors. Advances in biotechnological techniques like plant tissue culture provided new methods for rapid production of high-quality, disease-free, and true-to-type planting material. The technique not only offers a valuable alternative in fruit trees propagation studies but is also useful for virus control and management of genetic resources. Nowadays the range of routine technologies of plant tissue culture has expanded to include somatic embryogenesis, somatic hybridization, virus elimination, in vitro mutagenesis, anther or microspore culture production of haploids, embryo rescue technique or embryo culture, protoplast culture, and somatic fusion. Out of the abovementioned techniques, the most exploited one for mass production of fruit plants is micropropagation. To produce virus-free plants, meristem culture and micrografting techniques have been standardized in different fruit plants. The success varies with the plant species, variety, and the culture environment. Recently, attention has turned to the possible beneficial effects of microorganism’s in vitro plant cultures. It has been observed that mycorrhiza enhances the survival percentage of in vitro-raised plant. |