Induction and Selection of Potentially Useful Mutants in Banana

Mycosphaerella fijiensis, the black leaf streak pathogen of banana: progress towards understanding pathogen biology and detection, disease development, and the challenges of control

“…Nevertheless, M. fijiensis metabolites, including juglone (Lepoivre et al ., 2003) and 2,4,8‐THT (Okole and Schulz, 1997), have been used for in vitro screening of banana cell suspensions and somatic embryos or micro‐cross‐sections, respectively, in attempts to select clones resistant to BLSD. Others have screened regenerated survivors of irradiated embryogenic cell suspensions, explant tissues and plantlets to identify clones tolerant to juglone as putative BLSD‐resistant candidates (Reyes‐Borja et al ., 2005, 2007; Roux et al ., 2003, 2009). Although toxin‐tolerant plants were generated using each of these strategies, some of which showed increased resistance to M. fijiensis in growth chamber studies (Okole and Schulz, 1997), there have been no published reports demonstrating that banana plants tolerant to juglone or any other M. fijiensis metabolite show increased field resistance to BLSD.…”