Adventitious bud formation on isolated leaves and its significance for mutation breeding

Since a mutation is a unicellular event, irradiation of a multicellular meristem results in the so-called diplontic selection. This competition between the mutated cell and the surrounding non-mutated cells is often lost by the mutated cell, causing a low frequency of mutated plants and a narrow mutation spectrum. When a mutated cell survives, chimeras are automatically formed because most apices consist of a number of fairly independent groups of cell layers. Such an undesirable situation can be improved by growing complete plants from only one cell, resulting in a high frequency of solid, non-chimeral mutants and a wide mutation spectrum. Many plant species can be stimulated to form adven…