Tissue culture and transgenic plants : success, hopes and vision
2000
Norzulaani Khalid
The main purpose for carrying out tissue culture studies in our laboratory is for cloning, transformation studies and the production of new lines through polyploidisation and somaclonal variation. For cloning purposes, crops such as banana, ginger, citrus and musk melon have been developed. To date, banana (Musa spp.) varieties such as mas, cinta manis (a mas variant), berangan, rastali, lemak manis have been successfully cloned for commercial purposes. Currently, meristem explants have been adopted with success. To enhance production and to ensure high quality product, innovative equipment have been developed and alternative explants with high regeneration capacity have been employed. This paper will discuss both innovations in the production of tissue culture banana plants. An attempt to produce new variants of banana through long term cultures and field assessments are currently being carried out. We have now selected a few lines with superior agronomic traits and now recloning them via tissue culture before reassessment in the field to ensure stability. As for the medicinal ginger family, following successful cloning experiments, variants will be induced through polyploidisation of the ginger rhizomes using mutagens. We have now successfully produced transgenic brinjal with PVY genes and now evaluating the gen stability in the Fl generation. We hope in the near future to produce transgenic chilli plants with CMV and pungent genes, tobacco with dengue virus protein and banana with fungal resistance. In this paper, we will discuss how we trouble shoot problems encountered in certain experiments and the alternative solutions being adopted. Transient assay studies of various crops will be discussed in the absence of stable gene integration. The future for obtaining successful transgenic crops seems promising with the development of efficient tissue culture and the availability of suitable construct.
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