What Scientists Did To Create a Paintbrush Lily Masterpiece
Scientists from Hokkaido University and Chiba University have successfully developed triploid (3 chromosome sets) and hexaploid (6 chromosome sets) plants of the ornamental plant Haemanthus albiflos (aka, paintbrush lily; paint brush), via plant tissue culture (PTC) techniques. In addition to increasing the ornamental value of this plant, this is one of the first studies that use “endosperm culture” — an application of PTC techniques — for non-cereal monocotyledonous plants. Their findings were published in the journal Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture.
Triploid plants are quite unique among polyploid plants. Their most significant advantage is also their most significant disadvantage: due to the odd number of chromosome sets, the fruits are seedless, which boosts market value but also means that the plants can only be propagated by cuttings, instead of seeds. This disadvantage can be overcome by generating hexaploid plants from triploid plants.
Triploid plants are found naturally, albeit in very small numbers. They can be produced by cross-breeding diploid (2 chromosome sets) and tetraploid (4 chromosome sets) plants, or by PTC techniques. The advantage of PTC over cross-breeding is that a wider variety of plants can potentially be generated over a shorter period of time. Additionally, it is far easier to convert triploids to hexaploid plants by PTC techniques.
For more details, continue reading at ScienceDaily.com.
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