Protocols for Micropropagation of Woody Trees and Fruits

CHAPTER 48
IN VITRO MUTAGENESIS IN BANANA (MUSA SPP.)
USING GAMMA IRRADIATION
V.M. KULKARNI * , T.R. GANAPATHI, P. SUPRASANNA
AND V.A. BAPAT
Plant Cell Culture Technology Section, Nuclear Agriculture & Biotechnology
Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre,
Mumbai 400 085, India; * E-mail: vmk@barc.gov.in
1. INTRODUCTION
Bananas and plantains have a major contribution towards world’s food production
(FAO, 2006) and are an important staple food for millions of people inhabiting humid
and sub-humid tropics (INIBAP, 1992). These are amongst world’s leading fruit
crops, with an annual global production of about 88 million metric tons from an area
of approximately 10 million ha. Although several banana varieties are under
cultivation, the global market is dominated by the Cavendish types owing to their
higher yields and short duration. Most of the existing cultivars need to be improved
for one or other agronomically important characters (dwarfness, duration, yield,
quality of fruit etc.). Banana production is threatened by several bacterial, fungal,
viral diseases and other pests and building-up of genetic resistance towards these
biotic factors is urgently needed. There is also a greater need to develop tolerant
genotypes for salinity, drought, cold and unfavourable soils. The genetic improvement
of bananas is hampered because of several important reasons such as inherent
polyploidy, parthenocarpic fruit development, low levels of female fertility and raising
asexual progeny in sufficient numbers to recombine desirable characters. Further, long
life cycle and low in vivo rate of propagation are the main reasons behind unsuccessful
attempts of conventionally mutagenizing the vegetative plant parts such as suckers
(Kulkarni et al., 1997).
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S.M. Jain and H. Häggman (eds.), Protocols for Micropropagation of Woody Trees and Fruits, 543–559.
© 2007 Springer.