Advances in coffee tissue culture and its practical applications

Abstract

Genetic improvement of coffee, an important commercial crop, through classical breeding is slow and cumbersome. Biotechnology offers alternative strategies for generating new and improved coffee varieties, including those resistances to environmental extremes, pests, and diseases, low in caffeine, and with uniform fruit maturation. Large improvements in somatic embryogenesis, development of haploids, and scale-up of micropropagation have been accomplished in the last 5 yr. The recent identification of expressed sequence tags (EST) that are differentially expressed during the infestation of coffee plants by coffee leaf miners and the isolation and cloning of the promoter for the N-methyltransferase gene associated with caffeine production open up the possibility of producing varieties of coffee with new traits. This review provides a summary of in vitro biological advances and directions as to how they could be applied to improve the production and quality of coffee.

Direct shoot organogenesis on hypocotyl explants with collar region from in vitro seedlings of Coffea canephora Pierre ex. Frohner cv. C × R and Agrobacterium tumefaciens-mediated transformation

“…The improvement of coffee, being one of the commercially important crops, through in vitro culture technology has been receiving attention recently (Santana-Buzzy et al 2007;Sridevi and Giridhar 2008). Although coffee-breeding methods have some advantages, it is time-consuming and labor-intensive.…”

“…Allahabad Safeda has been reported (Singh et al 2002), and it was found that the shoots were of de novo origin, which would make them suitable for transformation experiments. In C. arabica and C. canephora, hypocotyl-based somatic embryogenesis has been reviewed by Santana-Buzzy et al (2007). Sporadic reports on direct shoot formation in C. arabica hypocotyl explants (Santa et al 1999) and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation using hypocotyl explants of C. canephora are available (Mishra and Sreenath 2004).…”

“…are susceptible to a wide variety of diseases and pests (SantanaBuzzy et al 2007), a bio-technological solution to diseases and pests with the rapid advancements in gene discovery and transgenic technology is more promising. But success in the genetic transformation of coffee requires an efficient system for plant regeneration (Santana-Buzzy et al 2007). In the present study, we report the direct regeneration of shoots or multiple shoot buds from the collar region end of hypocotyl explants of C. canephora C 9 R, which is the most important commercial coffee variety under cultivation in India.…”

Cryopreservation of Coffea arabica L. Zygotic Embryos by Vitrification

“…Embryos also provide the genetic variability necessary for breeding programs, thus as seed (Santana-Buzzy et al, 2007), and a more uniform and fast germination in relation to whole seeds (Bojórquez-Quintal et al, 2011).…”

“…(Santana-Buzzy et al, 2007), although most studies have been conducted with seeds, whereas it is known that seeds have a rapid loss of viability and differ in their tolerance to dehydration (Dussert et al, 1998). Therefore, the seed batch used must have a high initial quality, for a successful cryopreservation (Dussert and Engelmann, 2006).…”