Genetic analysis of in vitro plant tissue culture responses and regeneration capacities

Summary The in vitro development of a whole plant from a single cell (eg microspore or somatic cells) is a characteristic feature of plants. The amenability of a plant to in vitro culture is influenced by the genotype, which is thus of major importance in the plant tissue culture response. The differences observed between different cultivars during in vitro tissue culture with respect to embryogenesis and regeneration result from quantitative or qualitative genetic differences. We describe results obtained from quantitative genetic studies, from Mendelian genetic analysis and from gene mapping. It is less easy to study the influence of cytoplasmic genomes. Moreover, it is necessary to discriminate between maternal effects and cytoplasmic inheritance. A conclusion from this review is that the choice of parental strains for a breeding program should be realized on agronomic criteria rather than on compatibility with the tissue culture technique used. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to incorporate short-term tissue culture capacity into agronomically valuable genotypes. This is of major interest since tissue culture remains necessary for most aspects of crop plants biotechnology. Very little is known about the molecular events that trigger in vitro embryogenesis and regeneration. It is clear that genes involved in the tissue culture response are not specialised tissue culture genes.