With its beautiful trees, Citrus species have long been valued by humanity. The tasteful fruits, extensively used for nutrition, are also good for health due to the high content in vitamins, minerals, and dietary fibers. Like majority of the woody fruit plants, Citrus germplasm is conserved mainly as field collections in clonal orchards. However, such a traditional approach presents several difficulties, among which are the high cost, manual labor, and extensive land required to maintain the collections, as well as the necessity of a careful protection of plants from diseases and extreme environmental conditions. As many species in the genus have seeds recalcitrant to desiccation, conservation in seed banks is also inadequate. On the other hand, cryopreservation, i.e., the storage of specimens at ultra-low temperatures (usually in liquid nitrogen, at -196°C) where reactions within the cells are minimized, presents a unique alternative for the safe storage of such germplasm. The present contribution outlines the cryopreservation techniques applied to seeds, zygotic and somatic embryos, embryogenic callus cultures of Citrus spp. and provides sample protocols to be used for Citrus conservation
Cryogenic Technologies for the Long-Term Storage of Citrus Germplasm
De Carlo A;Lambardi M;Ozudogru EA
2011
Abstract
With its beautiful trees, Citrus species have long been valued by humanity. The tasteful fruits, extensively used for nutrition, are also good for health due to the high content in vitamins, minerals, and dietary fibers. Like majority of the woody fruit plants, Citrus germplasm is conserved mainly as field collections in clonal orchards. However, such a traditional approach presents several difficulties, among which are the high cost, manual labor, and extensive land required to maintain the collections, as well as the necessity of a careful protection of plants from diseases and extreme environmental conditions. As many species in the genus have seeds recalcitrant to desiccation, conservation in seed banks is also inadequate. On the other hand, cryopreservation, i.e., the storage of specimens at ultra-low temperatures (usually in liquid nitrogen, at -196°C) where reactions within the cells are minimized, presents a unique alternative for the safe storage of such germplasm. The present contribution outlines the cryopreservation techniques applied to seeds, zygotic and somatic embryos, embryogenic callus cultures of Citrus spp. and provides sample protocols to be used for Citrus conservationI documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.