Innovative breeding methods to develop seedless citrus cultivars

Abstract

Presence of a large number of seed contents in citrus fruits is a big restraint in consumer’s acceptability even if the fruit have premium organoleptic characteristics. Consumers are only willing to eat seeded fruits if seedless are not available. Seediness is also a major handicap restricting the use of large number of fruit in processing industries and increases the cost of juice or pulp production. Moreover, seed presence in the fruit may be related with bitterness and certain undesirable aromatic compounds. Various useful breeding approaches have been devised by researchers to reduce total number of seeds or create complete seedlessness in citrus fruits. These consist of both orthodox and modern molecular breeding tools. Conventional techniques used in the past encountered numerous problems due to specific reproductive physiology of citrus and was also time exhaustive. Modern molecular techniques like embryo rescue, protoplast fusion, cybrids, irradiation, inter specific or generic crosses, flow cytometry and citrus transformation are less time consuming and more productive as well as rapid results can be attained in short time period. Molecular techniques have further reduced the difficulties faced in conventional breeding to produce less seeded or completely seedless citrus cultivars.