Track 4-1-4: Biotechnological Approaches to Improve Range, Pasture and Forage Species
Description
Buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.) is one of the most important perennial forage grasses of the world. It is a polyploid forage grass suited to pastures, range-lands, tropics and sub-tropics of Australia, South Africa, and India. It reproduces predominantly through apomixis which provides a means of clonal propagation through seeds. In many of the plants apomixis shows dominance over sexuality, hence occurrence of obligate sexual plant in natural population is rare and over the time apomictic individuals outnumber sexuals. Being protogynous in nature, cross pollination from neighbouring apomictic plants leads to the production of either facultative or obligate apomictic genotypes. Apomictic mode of reproduction in buffelgrass makes its genetic improvement through conventional breeding difficult, time consuming and restricted to selection of elite lines from natural variants. Lack of sexual reproduction in C. ciliaris has severely limited the possibilities of genetic improvement of this species by hybridization (Yadav et al., 2012).
Sexual plant in C. ciliaris has occasionally been identified. A sexual plant of buffelgrass was identified earlier in the germplasm collection of C. ciliaris (Kumar et al., 2010) which is perennial in nature and shows characteristic features different from normal apomictic buffelgrass. Under natural conditions the plant shows very poor growth and survival, but under intensive care, the plant survives well and flowers 3-4 times in a year. The plant is very useful for genetic improvement of this species through hybridization and identification of gene(s) for apomixis.
Since the sexual plant is self-incompatible and reproduces sexually, it can be maintained by vegetative propagation or multiplied by tissue culture. Mature seeds have been one of the preferred explants for tissue culture because of its ready availability through-out the year (Kumar and Bhat, 2012), the sexual plant does not produce seeds on self-pollination. Hence, we used different parts of the plant to standardize tissue culture protocol. Here we report, high frequency plant regeneration via callus induction from immature inflorescence of the sexual plant which would be very useful in maintenance, multiplication and genetic manipulation of the plant with a gene of interest.
Citation
Kumar, Suresh; Sahu, Neha; and Singh, Archana, "In Vitro Plant Regeneration via Callus Induction in a Rare Sexual Plant of Buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.)" (2020). IGC Proceedings (1993-2023). 3.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/igc/23/4-1-4/3
Included in
In Vitro Plant Regeneration via Callus Induction in a Rare Sexual Plant of Buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.)
Buffelgrass (Cenchrus ciliaris L.) is one of the most important perennial forage grasses of the world. It is a polyploid forage grass suited to pastures, range-lands, tropics and sub-tropics of Australia, South Africa, and India. It reproduces predominantly through apomixis which provides a means of clonal propagation through seeds. In many of the plants apomixis shows dominance over sexuality, hence occurrence of obligate sexual plant in natural population is rare and over the time apomictic individuals outnumber sexuals. Being protogynous in nature, cross pollination from neighbouring apomictic plants leads to the production of either facultative or obligate apomictic genotypes. Apomictic mode of reproduction in buffelgrass makes its genetic improvement through conventional breeding difficult, time consuming and restricted to selection of elite lines from natural variants. Lack of sexual reproduction in C. ciliaris has severely limited the possibilities of genetic improvement of this species by hybridization (Yadav et al., 2012).
Sexual plant in C. ciliaris has occasionally been identified. A sexual plant of buffelgrass was identified earlier in the germplasm collection of C. ciliaris (Kumar et al., 2010) which is perennial in nature and shows characteristic features different from normal apomictic buffelgrass. Under natural conditions the plant shows very poor growth and survival, but under intensive care, the plant survives well and flowers 3-4 times in a year. The plant is very useful for genetic improvement of this species through hybridization and identification of gene(s) for apomixis.
Since the sexual plant is self-incompatible and reproduces sexually, it can be maintained by vegetative propagation or multiplied by tissue culture. Mature seeds have been one of the preferred explants for tissue culture because of its ready availability through-out the year (Kumar and Bhat, 2012), the sexual plant does not produce seeds on self-pollination. Hence, we used different parts of the plant to standardize tissue culture protocol. Here we report, high frequency plant regeneration via callus induction from immature inflorescence of the sexual plant which would be very useful in maintenance, multiplication and genetic manipulation of the plant with a gene of interest.
