EMBRYO CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF SEEDLINGS IN DIFFERENT CITRUS SPECIES

The citrus industry is considered to be a major fruit industry hence it needs to be improved to cater to the diverse needs of consumers and crop breeders. Genetic manipulation through conventional techniques in this genus is invariably a difficult task for plant breeders as it poses various biological limitations comprising long juvenile period, high heterozygosity, sexual incompatibility, nucellar polyembryony and large plant size that greatly hinder cultivar improvement. The demands for elite rootstock material are continuously increasing for fruit production and to fulfill such demands application of in vitro propagation techniques is one of the successful alternative particularly in case of citrus crops. One of the essential requirements for the successful application of plant propagation technology in agriculture is its capacity to regenerate elite plantlets. The process of embryo culture is a suitable method of micropropagation and has the potential of mass propagation commercially. Keeping in mind these things experiment on "Embryo culture and development of seedlings in different Citrus species" was conducted. The seeds were extracted from the developing fruits from the trees growing in the college nursery and were sterilized. The embryos of six Citrus species were cultured to obtain the stock plants. The germination ranged from 71.5 to 96.0 per cent and the embryos were inoculated on the basal Murashige and Skoog medium. Citrus limon gave the maximum (96 per cent) germination and Citrus sinensis resulted in minimum (71.5 per cent) germination. It was concluded from the experiment that in vitro propagation has been a great potential tool to overcome problems related with the field culture for citrus species. These advances in biotechnology have generated new opportunities for citrus genetic improvement. Therefore, development of efficient embryo culture protocols is necessary for conservation and qenetic improvement of citrus.