Overcoming roadblocks for in vitro nurseries in plants: induction of meiosis

Tanner M Cook; Daniel Isenegger; Somak Dutta; Sareena Sahab; Pippa Kay; Siddique I Aboobucker; Eva Biswas; Seth Heerschap; Basil J Nikolau; Liang Dong; Thomas Lübberstedt

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1204813

Overcoming roadblocks for in vitro nurseries in plants: induction of meiosis

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jun 2:14:1204813. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1204813. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Iowa State University, Department of Agronomy, Ames, IA, United States.
² Agriculture Victoria, Agribio, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
³ Iowa State University, Department of Statistics, Ames, IA, United States.
⁴ Iowa State University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Ames, IA, United States.
⁵ Iowa State University, Roy J. Carver Department of Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Molecular Biology, Ames, IA, United States.

Abstract

Efforts to increase genetic gains in breeding programs of flowering plants depend on making genetic crosses. Time to flowering, which can take months to decades depending on the species, can be a limiting factor in such breeding programs. It has been proposed that the rate of genetic gain can be increased by reducing the time between generations by circumventing flowering through the in vitro induction of meiosis. In this review, we assess technologies and approaches that may offer a path towards meiosis induction, the largest current bottleneck for in vitro plant breeding. Studies in non-plant, eukaryotic organisms indicate that the in vitro switch from mitotic cell division to meiosis is inefficient and occurs at very low rates. Yet, this has been achieved with mammalian cells by the manipulation of a limited number of genes. Therefore, to experimentally identify factors that switch mitosis to meiosis in plants, it is necessary to develop a high-throughput system to evaluate a large number of candidate genes and treatments, each using large numbers of cells, few of which may gain the ability to induce meiosis.

Keywords: high-throughput detection; in vitro biology; in vitro nurseries; meiosis induction; plant breeding and biotechnology.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

We want to thank the Iowa State University Plant Sciences Institute, RF Baker Center for Plant Breeding, and KJ Frey Chair in Agronomy for their generous support. This article is also a product of the Iowa Agriculture and Home Economics Experiment Station, Ames, Iowa, Project No. IOW03717 (S.D.), and Project No. IOW04714(T.L.) which is supported by USDA/NIFA and State of Iowa funds. This work was also supported by the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research under award number CA19-SS-0000000128 (T.L.). The content of this manuscript is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research or the U.S. Department of Agriculture.