Effect of Colchicine on Induction of Ploidy and Other Morphological Features of Different Crops: A Review

Abstract

Colchicine is a mitotic inhibitor and it has been used for induction of tetraploids in different crops. Different concentration of colchicine has been used for different time period in vivo and in vitro. Colchicine is used for such purposes because rate of spontaneously doubling in most species is rare in tissue culture. Treatment of colchicine in in vitro culture plant tissues has been efficiently used to artificially produce polyploids in different plants. In different crops such as vegetables, fruits and flowers tetraploids produce variants with favourable horticultural characteristics like high yield, large fruit size and resistance to different environmental stresses. Tetraploids was induced in vivo by applying colchicine in an aqueous solution, lanolin paste, on apical shoot meristem of seedling and soaked seeds. Colchicine use has been found a very prosperous methodology for genome doubling in a lot of species.