Molecular analysis of somaclonal variation in Linum usitatissimum and L. album

Abstract

Flax plant (Linum usitatissimum) is an important oilseed crop, with an annual world production of around three million tons. Flax is a crop with a rather low genetic variability and agriculturally important traits. Biotechnology and somaclonal variation is a potential way of inducing genetic variation in Linum. Therefore, we studied the occurrence of somaclonal variation and genetic variability in both flax plant and its wild relative, Linum album. We used a combination of simple sequence repeats (SSRs), and Expressed sequence tag SSRs (EST-SSRs), as well as inter-retrotransposon amplified polymorphism (IRAP) and retrotransposon-microsatellite amplified polymorphism (REMAP) molecular markers for genetic analyses. Tissue culture regenerated plants differed from mother plants in their morphological and genetic content. Moreover, some new bands were observed in regenerated plants in all molecular markers studied, probably due to soma clonal variation. The genetic changes occurred seemed to be genotype-dependent as evidenced by network analysis. This study reveals the potential application of somaclonal variation to induce new genetic variation in flax plant which may be of use in its future breeding.