Study on the Potential of Genic Male Sterility in Tomato as a Tool for Pollen Flow Restriction

Nair

2019

Male sterility is described as absence of functional pollen grains in hermaphrodite flowers facilitating large scale production of hybrid seeds in vegetable crops. It eases hybrid seed production at commercial level in crops like tomato, chilli, capsicum, carrot, onion, cabbage, cauliflower and cucurbits. Male sterility would reduce the cost of hybrid seed production by limiting the labour making it efficient and economical. Incorporation of biotechnological tools in conventional plant breeding techniques would aid the breeders in limiting the drawbacks surrounding exploitation of male sterility for development of new hybrids. The present review is an attempt to summarize and to know the commercial utilization of male sterile line in hybrid seed production of vegetables.

Section: Utilization Of Marker Genementioning

confidence: 99%

Male Sterility and its Commercial Exploitation in Hybrid Seed Production of Vegetable Crops: A Review

Nair

2019

“…Production of hybrids using GMS has been shown in pepper, chilli, cabbage, cauliflower and tomato (Dhall , Radkova et al. ).…”

Section: Types Of Pollination Controlmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…TGMS and PGMS lines have been reported in several horticultural crops (Dhall 2010). Production of hybrids using GMS has been shown in pepper, chilli, cabbage, cauliflower and tomato (Dhall 2010, Radkova et al 2009).…”

Section: Spontaneous and Induced Mutantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The use of genetic, manual and chemical methods to control pollination in vegetable hybrid seed production: a review

Colombo¹,

Galmarini

2017

Plant Breeding

Production of hybrid varieties of vegetable crops is currently a desired breeding goal, due to their remarkable agronomic performance and to the possibility of intellectual property protection. However, efficient hybrid production requires a careful pollination control to guarantee the hybrid nature of F 1 seed. Several technologies ranging from manual emasculation to genetic transformation are used to inhibit pollen production in mother plants. In this review, we examine the principles underlying strategies like genetically determined systems (genic male sterility, cytoplasmic-genic male sterility, self-incompatibility) and other methods (manual emasculation, chemical-hybridizing agents) in different species, considering the benefits and drawbacks of their adoption. Finally, we present the current state of the art for vegetable hybrid seed production.

“…The tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum Mill.) is a valuable self-pollinating fruit crop that is cultivated globally [ 1 ]. The tomato is imminently suitable for genetic engineering and as a model plant due to its small genome [ 2 , 3 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gene silencing, knockout and over-expression of a transcription factor ABORTED MICROSPORES (SlAMS) strongly affects pollen viability in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)

et al. 2022

Background The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an economically valuable crop grown worldwide. Because the use of sterile males reduces the cost of F1 seed production, the innovation of male sterility is of great significance for tomato breeding. The ABORTED MICROSPORES gene (AMS), which encodes for a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, has been previously indicated as an essential gene for tapetum development in Arabidopsis and rice. To determine the function of the SlAMS gene (AMS gene from S. lycopersicum) and verify whether it is a potential candidate gene for generating the male sterility in tomato, we used virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing and over-expression technology to transform tomato via Agrobacterium infection. Results Here, the full-length SlAMS gene with 1806 bp from S. lycopersicum (Accession No. MK591950.1) was cloned from pollen cDNA. The results of pollen grains staining showed that, the non-viable pollen proportions of SlAMS-silenced (75%), −knockouted (89%) and -overexpressed plants (60%) were significantly higher than the wild type plants (less than 10%; P < 0.01). In three cases, the morphology of non-viable pollen grains appeared tetragonal, circular, atrophic, shriveled, or otherwise abnormally shaped, while those of wild type appeared oval and plump. Furthermore, the qRT-PCR analysis indicated that SlAMS in anthers of SlAMS-silenced and -knockouted plants had remarkably lower expression than in that of wild type (P < 0.01), and yet it had higher expression in SlAMS-overexpressed plants (P < 0.01). Conclusion In this paper, Our research suggested alternative approaches to generating male sterility in tomato, among which CRISPR/Cas9-mediated editing of SlAMS implied the best performance. We also demonstrated that the downregulation and upregulation of SlAMS both affected the pollen formation and notably led to reduction of pollen viability, suggesting SlAMS might be essential for regulating pollen development in tomato. These findings may facilitate studies on clarifying the SlAMS-associated molecular regulatory mechanism of pollen development in tomato.