Pemanfaatan Teknik Kultur in Vitro Untuk Konservasi Plasma Nutfah Ubi-ubian

Abstract

Except for potato, sweet potato, taro, yam, and cassava, most of tuber crops are considered as underutilized crops. However, tuber crops are potential as alternative carbohydrate sources, so they can be used as food reserves to face global climate change that affects food security in certain area throughout the world, including Indonesia. Having high diversity in tuber crops germplasm, Indonesia must be able to conserve those germplasm to ensure their availability in the future. In the future, without ignoring all the probable constraints, the prospect in utilization of in vitro culture technique will be higher for improvement of conservation and management of genetic resources in the form of active and base collections. In this paper, strategy in developing in vitro collection of tuber crops germplasm, i.e. slow growth technique for medium term storage and cryopreservation technique for long term storage, is discussed including how to analyze genetic stability of the collections. Several national and international research centers dealing with research and development of in vitro conservation technique are presented.