6. Applications of somatic hybridization

1.  Novel interspecific and intergeneric crosses which are difficult to produce by conventional methods can be easily obtained.

2.  Important characters, such as resistance to diseases, ability to undergo abiotic stress and other quality characters, can be obtained in hybrid plant by the fusion of protoplasts of plant bearing particular character to the other plant which may be susceptible to diseases.

3.  Protoplasts of sexually sterile haploid, triploid, aneuploid plants can be fused to obtain fertile diploids and polyploids.

4.  Studying cytoplasmic genes may be helpful to carry out plant breeding.

5.  Most of the agronomically important traits, such as cytoplasmic male sterility, antibiotic resistance and herbicide resistance, are cytoplasmically encoded, hence can be easily transferred to other plant.

6.  Plants in juvenile stage can also be hybridized by means of somatic hybridization.

7.  Somatic hybridization can be used as a method for the production of autotetraploids.

 

7. Limitations of somatic hybridization

1.  Application of protoplast methodology requires efficient plant regeneration system from isolated protoplasts. Protoplasts from two species can be fused, however, production of somatic hybrids is not easy.

2.  Lack of a proper selection method for fused products (hybrids) poses a problem.

3.  The end product of somatic hybridization are often unbalanced (sterile, misformed and unstable)

4. Somatic hybridization of two diploids leads to formation of amphidiploids which is unfavorable.

5.  It is not sure for a character to completely express after somatic hybridization.

6.  The regeneration products of somatic hybridization are often variable due to somaclonal variation, chromosome elimination, organelle segregation.

7. All diverse intergeneric somatic hybrids are sterile and, therefore, have limited chances of development of new varieties.

8. To transfer useful genes from wild species to cultivated crop, it is necessary to achieve intergeneric recombination or chromosome substitution between parental genomes.