In vitro induction of mutation in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.) and isolation of mutants with improved yield and fiber characters

Abstract

This paper describes a protocol to develop cotton mutant lines with improved yield and fiber characters. Immature ovules [(15-day post-anthesis ovules (dap)] were irradiated with 10-50 Gy gamma rays and treated with 1-5 mM EMS and SA to investigate the stimulatory effects of mutagenic treatments. During the subsequent field trials, the mutant lines showed significant variations from control lines. Lower dose/concentration of mutagenic treatments effectively stimulate the agronomical characters like early flowering, plant height, number of bolls, yield of seed cotton, ginning percent, seed index, harvest index and fiber characters while exposure at higher dose/concentration results in lowering the value of the parameters. Consequently, we use this approach to induce genetic variability for obtaining novel mutant cotton cultivars. Among the 19 different mutant lines isolated from the study, M7 showed higher morphological variations in terms of yield characters such as plant height, number of bolls, yield of seed cotton, ginning percent and fiber characters. Significant increase in cellulose content was also noted in mutant lines, whereas moderate increase was observed in total fiber units of the mutant lines. The selected cotton mutant lines for cultivars were investigated systematically; these lines significantly increased the potential for agronomical enhancement of cotton yield.

NIAB-2008: A New High Yielding and Long Staple Cotton Mutant Developed through Pollen Irradiation Technique

“…Number of mutants of different crop plants have been developed and released in different countries of the world with improvement in some characters (Ahloowalia et al, 2004). Such mutants are reported in cotton Muthusamy and Jayabalan, 2011), soybean (Hofmann et al, 2004), potato (Li et al, 2005), cassava (Joseph et al, 2004, Buttibwa et al, 2015, Chrysanthemum (Datta et al, 2005) and groundnut .…”

Rapid Isolation of Loss‐of‐Function Mutations for Dominant Traits: A Case Study Using Photoperiod Sensitivity Trait in Pima Cotton

“…This agrees with previous reports that γ ray treatment can induce both point mutations and small deletions in plants (Wu et al, 2005). Most of the published γ ray‐induced mutagenesis studies in cotton focused on evaluating phenotypic performance (Auld et al, 2000; Kandhro et al, 2002; Muthusamy and Jayabalan, 2011), whereas only a few studies characterized the genotypic pattern of the mutants (Gao et al, 2006; Abdurakhmonov et al, 2007). Abdurakhmonov et al (2007) reported both increased and decreased allele sizes of SSR loci in mutants in photoperiod‐converted mutants.…”

“…In cotton, successful mutagenesis studies using colchicine (Luckett, 1989), EMS (Auld et al, 2000; Herring et al, 2004; Patel et al, 2014), and γ rays (Gao et al, 2006; Abdurakhmonov et al, 2007; Muthusamy and Jayabalan, 2011) have been reported. More recently, CRISPR/Cas9 has been adapted for cotton (Chen et al, 2017; Gao et al, 2017; Janga et al, 2017; Li et al, 2017).…”

Construction of Gossypium barbadense Mutant Library Provides Genetic Resources for Cotton Germplasm Improvement

“…Mutagenesis in combination with modern genetic tools has the potential to rapidly utilize the genetic variability of targeted loci in cotton for both improving fiber characteristics and abiotic/biotic stress tolerance. EMS-induced mutations in Upland cotton has been used to generate new valuable alleles and traits, leading to development of commercial cultivated varieties [ 6 , 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ]. Recently, EMS-induced mutant libraries have been constructed in Upland cotton [ 13 ] representing beneficial genetic variations.…”