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Tissue culture of Manila Super Mango bags PARRFI R&D award

After years of study, researchers from the Institute of Plant Breeding at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) have developed a tissue culture (TC) protocol for mango coupled with a successful system for transplant to soil. This research, Tissue Culture of Mango var. ‘Carabao’, won the Philippine Agriculture and Resources Research Foundation, Inc. (PARRFI) Research and Development Award at Los Baños Science Community’s celebration of the National Science and Technology Week.

The technology is important as a rapid method of propagation of superior ‘Carabao’ strains or of uniform rootstocks for germplasm conservation and exchange and for genetic transformation.

Tissue culture of woody species like mango is prone to failure. In previous attempts both locally and abroad, tissues turn brown easily or fail to form callus or regenerate into embryos/plantlets. Complicating the situation is the difficulty in ensuring the survival of tissue-cultured plants when transferred to the soil.

The ‘Carabao’ or ‘Manila Super’ mango is the third leading Philippine export fruit after banana and pineapple. Because of its importance, the best planting materials must be used to develop plantations and ensure future productivity. According to team leader Lilian F. Pateña, “the technology can be used to propagate elite stocks, to conserve germplasm, and can be used for germplasm exchange”.

Further, Pateña stressed that the technology “opens new possibilities for biotechnology research in mango”. A reliable TC protocol for mango is a vital follow-through to the biotechnology aimed to raise the fruit’s value. Mango plants with improved traits would have to be successfully regenerated from the genetically transformed mango cells. The TC protocol surmounts this potential bottleneck in the gene transfer process.

One of the major obstacles in the successful TC of mango is the browning of tissues being cultured. The research team did not encounter this problem and attributes its success to using protocols developed earlier and fine tuning the composition of culture media.

The greater challenge was the transfer and survival of plantlets to the soil. The team spent a year in developing the TC requirements for the induction of embryos from tissue cells (somatic embryos) and proliferation of the cells. Conversely, it took three years to come up with the right acclimatization and transfer techniques to ensure that the plantlets survived in the soil.

The UPLB team includes Maureen Bonna C. Ines, Alice B. Formaran, and Ramon C. Barba. This is the first report of a successful TC system up to transfer to soil of a polyembryonic mango.

The PARRFI R&D Award is given to projects in the fields of agriculture, forestry and environment in two categories – research and development.    The project was funded by the Department of Science and Technology, UPLB, and PCARRD.

Written by Sandra Alena L. Ilao, S&T Media Service

Source: Pcarrd