Somaclonal Variation among Tissue Culture-derived Planting Materials of Peanut cv. Gajah

Abstract

Somaclonal variation was common among tissue culture-derived planting materials, especially due to prolonged culture period or due to utilization of calli prior to development of shoot embryos. Somaclonal variation phenomena have been used to generate mutants for specific purposes. In relation to genetic engineering, however, the existence of somaclonal variation was not desirable. The ultimate goal of plant genetic engineering was to obtain transgenic plant lines with no one or a few new traits due to the introduced genes, and with the same genetic background as the original cultivar. Therefore, utilization of plant tissue culture technique inducing as low somaclonal variation as possible were necessary. This study was conducted to identify the existence of somaclonal variation among different tissue culture techniques.