Challenges and opportunities for the development of fruit crops through tissue culture: an overview

Fruit cultivation is heavily dependent on climatic condition and is susceptible to several diseases caused by fungi, bacteria, viruses, insects, etc. Extensive research work has been carried out to standardize tissue culture protocols and utilize them in fruit improvement. Plant improvement based on mutations, which change one or a few specific traits of a cultivar, can contribute to fruit improvement without altering the requirements of fruit industry. Induced mutations have well defined limitations in fruit breeding applications, but their possibilities may be expanded by the use of in vitro techniques. Tissue culture increases the efficiency of mutagenic treatments for variation induction, handling of large populations, use of ready selection methods, and rapid cloning of selected variants. Molecular techniques can provide a better understanding of the potential and limitations of mutation breeding e.g. molecular marker-assisted selection, which can lead to the early identification of useful variants. The relatively high number of research reports compared with the low number of cultivars released suggests that mutagenesis in combination with tissue culture is either ineffective or has yet to be exploited in fruits. The purpose of this review is to focus upon the current information on in vitro propagation and biotechnological advances made in fruit crops. Biotechnology tools comprising tissue culture, molecular markers, recombinant DNA technology and genetic engineering can help fulfill consumers demand. The role of polyphenols causing hinderances in micropropagation in fruit crops has been overcome due to certain phytohormones. Now micropropagation protocol for fruit crops can easily be developed and if the efforts will succeed, will bring break through in micropropagation of litchi along with other added advantages.