ABSTRACT
Potato (Solarium tuberosum L.) is one of the most amenable of major crop plants to tissue and cell culture manipulations. Explants used success fully for in vitro regeneration and micropropagation of potato plants in clude various types of meristem, protoplasts, leaf, tuber, and intemodes. Perhaps more than any other crop save tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.), cell and tissue culture methods have greatly contributed to improvement of potatoes. Meristem culture and micropropagation have become rou tine in potato seed certification schemes (Struik and Wiersema 1999). Anther-derived haploids of potato have been used in mapping studies and breeding strategies. Potato somatic hybrids have been used to introgress traits from sexually incompatible germplasm into the culti vated genepool and somaclones derived from regenerated protoplasts released as improved cultivars. Many of the tissue culture techniques applied to potato have been reviewed from time to time over the years. This review discusses the various tissue culture techniques applied to potato and follows the format of a college course or textbook on plant tissue culture, i.e., it commences with disorganized cultures (callus and suspension), then takes up various routes of regeneration, and finishes with breeding applications such as anther or microspore culture and pro toplast fusion.
