Present status, prospects and scope of in vitro mutant selection: simple mutation breeding approach for improving crop plants with enhanced abiotic stress tolerance

Abstract

Abiotic stresses like drought, salinity, cold, frost and metal toxicity are key concerns that affects crop plants in terms of economic yield and productivity. The effects of these stresses are aggravated by the changing climatic scenario. Conventional methods of breeding to develop abiotic stress tolerant crop plants are time consuming and are also limited by paucity of resistant varieties in the gene pool for some crop plants. Mutation breeding is one the promising approaches to evolve crop plants with enhanced abiotic stress tolerance, but it also has limitations. Alternate to this mutation breeding approach is incorporating mutation and selection in tissue culture plants which is called in vitro mutant selection. This approach seems to be promising and has been proved successful in many crop plants. The present review summarizes the details of the selection agents and strategies that have been adopted in developing mutant lines through in vitro mutant selection against stresses like salinity, acidity, drought, metal toxicity and cold stress with few examples and illustrations. This paper gives an overall view of the potentials, prospects and scope of in vitro mutant selection in crop plants against various abiotic stresses.