Early Flowering and Fruiting in Potted Citrus Trees: Exploitation for Mutation Breeding

Abstract

Many commercially-important tree fruit cultivars have originated as naturally occurring mutants. Irradiation of mature clones has been employed to increase the frequency of mutation in clonally propagated plants (9). Mutagenesis is appropriate when minor changes are desired in an otherwise acceptable cultivar, and it has been employed extensively to reduce seediness in Citrus(3, 7, 8). Mutation breeding may accelerate cultivar development in comparison with conventional breeding (i.e., genetic recombination) because the juvenile phase is circumvented in the former. Propagules derived from budwood of mature (vs. juvenile) clones may flower and fruit earlier in response to various inductive treatments including root confinement (10).