Micropropagation Applications in Conservation of Horticultural Crops

The scenario of climate change and its impact leads to the emergence of new challenges to biodiversity and future productivity. The protection of biodiversity is giving high attention to looking for new, more effective and efficient methods for the conservation of biodiversity as well as for food and nutritional security for future demand. Horticultural crops are an important and integral part of food and nutrition and comprise various species ranging from fruits, spices and nuts, vegetables, ornamental, aromatic and medicinal plants and urgent need to conserve their germplasm for the present and future genetic improvement programs and conservation of horticultural genetic diversity. In the past few years, with the rapid strides in plant biotechnology, particularly in plant micropropagation and its utilization in various strategies of conservation have been developed. These new techniques are now commonly used for collection, multiplication, exchange, and short- to medium- and long-term conservation. Conservation of different crops has been achieved for different durations by different approaches, and has an important role in providing solutions for various futuristic solutions such as breeding program, crop improvement, and maintaining biodiversity and food and nutritional security, especially by conserving horticultural crops. Various protocols have been developed successfully for different horticultural crops for different time periods ranging from a few months to years, using micropropagation techniques for short- to medium- and long-term conservation strategies. Micropropagation includes mass multiplication to short-term conservation and changing different factors affecting plant growth and development prerequisite to medium-term conservation and, by storage at ultra-low temperatures, long-term conservation strategies have been developed.