Cloning seeds to increase food production

Announcing this at a press conference on Friday, Dr Ch Mohan Rao, CCMB Director, said: “The phenomenon of clonal seed formation, known as apomixis, occurs in a few plant species but not in food crops. But our research with other global institutions has shown that it is possible to engineer clonal seed formation in sexual plants.”

The research being published in the 18th issue of Journal Science is a collaborative work between the research groups of Dr Imran Siddiqui of CCMB, Dr Raphael Mercier Institut National Recherché de la Agronomique, France) and Dr Simon Chan (University of California, Davis,USA).

Siddiqui said that the work done on the model plant (Arabidopsis thaliana) belonging to the mustard family has shown that it is possible to retain hybrid vigour of plants by manipulating known genes that function during normal sexual reproduction and cell division.
Explaining the benefits of their findings, Siddiqui said that the hybrids in crops that are made by crossing two varieties lose their vitality over successive generations because of underlying genetic combinations.

“If, however we can reproduce seeds by apomixis, then hybrid vigour will be maintained as it will be the exact clone of its parent,” Siddiqui explained.

This would reduce the cost of hybrid seed production and also mean that the farmer would be able to multiply his own hybrid seeds and not be compelled to buy them for every planting.

The process will also cut short years of research required in traditional multiplication of hybrid seeds. However, CCMB scientists said that application of the fruits of their research to food crops like rice would take five to ten years.