Cotton Ovule Culture: A Tool for Biological and Biotechnological Studies of Cotton

Cotton is one of the most important crops in the world and increasing cotton yield is the main goal in the cotton industry. One important factor for crop improvement is increasing produced fibers by each developing seed. It is very interesting to manipulate fiber properties such as length, micronaire, color and strength which necessitate cotton ovule culture. Ovule culture is used as a tool to study physiology and biochemistry of secondary cell wall synthesis, effects of plant growth regulators, nutrition and environmental conditions on fiber and ovule development, inter-specific hybridization and embryo recue. This technique can be used for analysis of functional genes in fibers as transient expression systems. In this regard, fiber-specific promoters should be identified in developing fibers. Optimum growth regulator combinations can increase fiber yield and uniformity in vitro conditions. Despite mature ovules exogenous Indole-3-acetic acid and gibberellic acid are required for fiber development of unfertilized ovules in vitro condition even though these two hormones also induce fiber production in fertilized ovules. On the whole cotton ovule culture can be used as a model before permanent cotton transformation and field trials.