In vitro culture, sanitation and indexing of the Yam Collection of the Antilles Tropical Plant Biological Resource Center

Abstract

In vitro culture covers a number of techniques used to regenerate, propagate, conserve and sanitize whole plants from fragments of plant tissue in artificial medium and under controlled lighting and temperature conditions. It allows the Biological Resource Center for Tropical Plant (BRC TP) to preserve several hundred accessions of yam, banana, pineapple and sugar cane, in the form of vitroplants in the in vitro culture laboratories of the INRAE and CIRAD centers in Guadeloupe and Martinique. The in vitro preservation of yams is performed in four steps: the introduction using stems of yams containing meristems, multiplication by micrografting and sanitation using thermotherapy and meristem culture, followed by viral indexing. Thus, the BRC PT has developed for yam 13 RT-PCR tests to detect RNA viruses and one IC-PCR test to detect a DNA virus called badnavirus which exists in integrated form in the yam genome. The final aim of these different techniques is the preservation and then dissemination of virus-free vitroplants to farmers, researchers, etc. at the national and international scales.