Flow Cytometry Analysis of In Vitro Induced Polyploidy in Plants

Polyploidy is the condition of having more than two sets of chromosomes. The mechanism of polyploidy helps in deriving special traits like an increase in biomass, an increase in the size of various organ systems, and secondary metabolite content for the progeny. Various chemical compounds (colchicine, trifluralin, and oryzalin) that have the capacity to alter the mitotic cycle were used for the purpose of inducing polyploidy. Various techniques, such as counting of chromosome number, chloroplast number, determination of pollen diameter, and estimation of leaf stomatal density and size, were developed to analyze the polyploidy of the plants. However, these methods are not reliable for their regular use. Thus, of all the above-mentioned approaches, the estimation of ploidy level by flow cytometry (FCM) has been the most popular over the last few decades. Flow cytometry is now extensively used for the verification of haploidy, aneuploidy, and polyploidy. The ease of sample preparation, fast acquisition, and accurate measurements have made the method popular in the domains of plant cell biology, systematics, evolution, genetics, and biotechnology. The current chapter discusses the induction of polyploidy and its importance in plant breeding. It also emphasizes the importance of FCM in the analysis of polyploidy and enumerates the various polyploidy studies involving the application of FCM.

Keywords: Ploidy analysis, In vitro polyploidy, Colchicine, Flow cytometry, Fluorescence.