In vitro culture as a tool for improvement of cabbage cultivars in Yugoslavia

Abstract

Cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) is one of the most common vegetables in Yugoslavia. Our breeding programs on Brassicas are developed with the aim to create genetically pure lines which could be used for creation of various hybrids and new cultivars. Since there are barriers which prevent fast realization of these goals, we have introduced in vitro culture techniques in our breeding programs. Thus we investigated possibilities of using micropropagation, anther culture, in vitro selection and genetic engineering methods as tools to improve our Brassicas and create new perspective genotypes suitable for uses in conventional breeding methods. So far we have clonned a number of perspective Brassica genotypes and identified the most appropriate medium for their growth and multiplication. We present here our efforts to overcome incompatibility barriers by attempting to create double-haploid genotypes of cabbage through anther culture. Identifying possible tolerance of our domestic populations to herbicide by in vitro selection is also one of our goals. We have also created our first transformed Brassicas, performing Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. In this paper we have presented our research in these areas.