Abstract
Investigation was made to confirm the stability of drought and salt stress tolerance in cauliflower (Brassica oleracea var.botrytis) mutants after regeneration and micropropagation. The N-nitroso-N-ethyleurea (NEU) and N-nitroso-N-methylurea (NMU) induced mutants of cauliflower were created and screened for drought and salt stress tolerance. The highly tolerant mutants were selected, regenerated by tissue culture techniques, screened again for drought and salt tolerance under in-vitro and in-vivo conditions, correlated the response of in-vitro and in-vivo plants within a clone. Free proline levels in clones were correlated with stress tolerance. Results confirmed the persistence of mutations in clones with enhanced resistance levels to stresses over control plants. The regenerated in-vitro and in-vivo plants within a clone showed a positive significant correlation for drought (R2 = 0.663) and salt (R2 = 0.647) resistance that confirms the stability of mutation in clones after generations. Proline showed a positive and significant correlation with drought (R2 = 0.524) and salt (R2 = 0.786) tolerance. Conclusively, drought and salt resistance can be successfully enhanced in cauliflower by chemical mutagenesis. Further molecular analysis is recommended to study these mutants.
Highlights
Abiotic stresses such as drought and salinity due to their wide range occurrence may cause the most fatal economic losses in agriculture
In this paper we report the analysis of regenerated mutants and control plants for drought and salt stress tolerance under in-vitro and invivo conditions
The invitro regenerated clones were transferred to in-vivo conditions through weaning process (Figure 1(b)) and this weaning process demonstrated 100% successful transfer of in-vitro clones to in-vivo conditions without any damageable symptom observed even in a single plant
Summary
Abiotic stresses such as drought and salinity due to their wide range occurrence may cause the most fatal economic losses in agriculture. It is accepted that the human population of the world is increasing day by day at an alarming rate and crop productivity is decreasing due to various abiotic stresses [4]. The minimization of these losses is a major area of concern for crop scientists. The classical methods of breeding is time consuming and sometime inefficient while through DNA mutation or direct gene transfer the cultivar might be improved for stress resistance without disrupting the genotype and breaking of gene linkages [5]. Mutation offers the possibility of inducing desired attributes that either cannot be expressed in nature or have been lost during evolution [6]
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