Oat (Avena sativa L.) In Vitro Cultures: Prospects and Challenges for Breeding

Abstract

Plant in vitro cultures have been a crucial component of efforts to enhance crops and advance plant biotechnology. Traditional plant breeding is a time-consuming process that, depending on the crop, might take up to 25 years before an improved cultivar is available to farmers. This is a problematic technique since both beneficial qualities (such as pest resistance) and negative ones (such as decreased yield) can be passed down from generation to generation. In vitro cultures provide various advantages over traditional methods, including the capacity to add desirable characteristics and speed up the development of new cultivars. When it comes to oat (Avena sativa L.), the efficient method of plant regeneration is still missing compared to the most common cereals, possibly because this cereal is known to be recalcitrant to in vitro culture. In this review, an effort has been made to provide a succinct overview of the various in vitro techniques utilized or potentially involved in the breeding of oat. The present work aims to summarize the crucial methods of A. sativa L. cultivation under tissue culture conditions with a focus on the progress that has been made in biotechnological techniques that are used in the breeding of this species.