ABSTRACT
Traditional breeding programs have made great strides in few years in improving both the environmental range and total yields for many important food crops. Rice and other agriculturally important crops have also witnessed substantial, although less dramatic, improvements in total yields. One of the most serious limitations of traditional plant breeding is that of sexual incompatibility. Sexual compatibility may fail at any number of critical steps, pollen germination, pollen tube growth, fertilization, or seed development. Somatic hybridization circumvents the problem of sexual incompatibility by artificially combining the genomes of two or more parents in a single hybrid. This is done by fusing together nonreproductive somatic cells from one parent with those of another in vitro. The hybrids grew vigorously and produced large amounts of anthocyanins in the stem and the underside of leaves, reminiscent of tomato. Small to medium-sized white tubers were formed and, on some hybrids, sterile yellow fruit were set which had a distinct “tomato-like odor”.
