Somaclonal breeding of reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea L.)

Abstract

Tissue culture-induced variants (somaclones) of reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea L.) were developed from callus cells of aseptic spikelet cultures. Molecular polymorphism of the populations of somaclones and spikelet-donor plants as natural vegetative clones were compared by the application of polymerase chain reaction (PCR)-based techniques of random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD)-, simple sequence repeat (SSR)-, and inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR)-PCR to genomic DNA samples. The genetic diversity was higher in the somaclones compared with vegetative clones as measured by the maximum genetic distance (MaxGD) which increased from 0-401 (vegetative clones) to 0-498 (somaclones). A..