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Abstract

Plant breeders are faced with new challenges such as climate change, human population growth, etc., which threaten to sustain food production worldwide. There are visible signs on the negative impact on world food production and rise in food price. Mutations are induced to enhance the mutation frequency rate since the rate of spontaneous mutations is very low and difficult to exploit by the plant breeders. Over 3000 officially released mutant varieties have been released worldwide. The main advantage of mutagenesis is the selection of mutants with multiple traits. By transgenic approach, single gene trait transgenic plants have been produced; moreover, consumers are not ready to accept genetically modified food. Bio-safety regulations are not applied to mutants. By using in vitro techniques plant regeneration is successful of all major food and horticultural crops. Micropropagation via organogenesis is routinely used for clonal propagation of ornamental plants and other vegetative propagated plants, especially woody and fruits trees. Explants, e.g. shoot meristem is treated with mutagen and regenerate shoots followed by root formation; mutants are selected under the selection pressure e.g. disease, salt, drought. The selected mutant plants are transferred and evaluated in the greenhouse and finally to the field evaluation and use them for crossing with other varieties. An overview will highlight several mutants in different crops; tomato (drought and salt tolerant), banana (Black sigatoka and Fusarium wilt tolerant), date palm (Bayoud disease) and strawberry (Phytophthora cactorum tolerant), wheat (salt tolerant and resistance to yellow rust, sesame (insect resistance) and rice (dwarf, salt tolerant).

Biography

Shri Mohan Jain is a Plant Biotechnologist at the Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. He has received his MPhil in 1973 and PhD in 1978 from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow in Israel and USA, Visiting Professor in Japan and Ital and Technical Officer of Plant Breeding and Genetics at International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Austria from 1999-2005. He is an Editorial Board Member of Euphytica, In Vitro, Propagation of Ornamental Plants, Emirates J. Food and Agriculture, Reviewer in Plant Cell Reports, Mutation Research and Plant Cell Tissue Organ Culture. His has 130 publications in peer reviewed journals, book chapters and conference proceedings and edited 41 books and was also an invited speaker and acted as a Chair person in several international conferences worldwide. He was awarded with Nobel Peace Prize (2005) in commemoration the awarding to IAEA of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2005 and also a Consultant of IAEA, European Union and the Egyptian Government.

Email: mohan.jain@helsinki.fi