CITRUS GERMPLASM COLLECTION AND MUTATION BREEDING

Indonesia has several kind local citrus species that are spread out in citrus centre areas.
Some of the most famous of them are pummelo, Siam (tangerines group) and Keprok (mandarines
group). Beside then, the relatives are often found in some of the areas as landraces.
To conserve and utilize genetic resources citrus Indonesia, ICSFRI has collected 210
accessions of citrus. Collection accession has been characterized and observed various
morphological, cytological, chemical and genetic. Part of the collection is being used as parent trees in
citrus seed business and is also used in citrus breeding activities in order to improve the quality of fruit
and plants.
Improved quality of citrus fruit and plants are needed to produce new varieties that withstand
biotic and abiotic disorders. As well as done for improving fruit quality such as reducing the number of
seeds, improvement of the size or increasing its flavor and nutritional value. Some breeding activities
can be done for that purpose, one through mutation breeding.
Mutation breeding refers to development of new cultivar or germplasm by desirable production
and selection of new mutation. In some cases, the objective of the breeders is to create in existing
cultivar that improves a defect such as seediness. The breeder may also utilize mutation breeding to
obtain selections with a desired mutation, and the use this germplasm as parents in a hybridization
selection programme.
ICSFRI has conducted radiation of gamma rays on pummelo, Siam and Keprok started in
2003. The main objective of this activity is to get quality fruit that has seeds slightly. But as the nature
of mutation breeding in which the changes may also occur on other characters, then after selection of
the main character made, candidate’s plants performed well in testing for resistance to major diseases
that often attack such as CTV and Huang lung bin. Both the disease, especially Huang lung bin has
caused severe damage on citrus in Indonesia. These diseases include cause of death of citrus trees
on a large scale in the 1980s in some citrus centers, such as Jeneponto, Bantaeng, Bulukumba, and
Malangke districts. Mutation treatment is not expected to make the candidate plant more susceptible
to both diseases that become harmful nature of the new varieties that will be released. that become
harmful character of the new varieties that will be released.

Figure 1. Candidate Of Seedless Citrus Varieties