MOLECULAR MARKERS APPLIED TO PLANT-TISSUE CULTURE

The last decade has witnessed successful applications of plant tissue culture techniques in several crops. During that same period, studies in plant molecular genetics have also grown exponentially. Molecular markers (isozymes, RFLPs, and PCR-based markers such as RAPDs) are now used to study many of the current limitations of tissue culture. They have been used to investigate mechanisms that underlie somaclonal variation in the nuclear, mitochondrial, and chloroplast genomes. One recurrent problem with several tissue culture systems has been the difficulty of determining the origin of regenerants. Molecular markers represent powerful tools to determine precisely the origin of plants derived from microspore or anther culture, protoplast fusion, and other tissue culture studies where this information is important, With improvements in tissue culture techniques, populations of doubled haploid lines have been produced in several major crop species. Doubled haploid populations have proven useful in the production of molecular maps and in tagging important agronomic traits. This review describes the use of molecular markers to address fundamental and practical questions of plant tissue culture, and discusses the potential of improvements in molecular techniques and new molecular markers such as SCAR and STS along with high-resolution mapping strategies.