It is of capital importance to assess the genetic stability of the
recovered material prior to determining the success of a protocol.
Cold storage or slow growth technique involved in vitro culture
manipulation of the stored tissues which could be considered as
a potential risk for the generation of genetic instability (Brar and
Jain, 1998). In vitro culture represents a physiological stress that
is characterized by disruption of normal developmental controls,
which can ultimately lead to various kinds of aberrations at the
nucleotide sequence level (Cassels and Curry, 2001). Generally, to
assess genetic stability several molecular techniques have been
applied, but probably the most commonly used and conclusive are
RAPD, ISSR and AFLP (amplified fragment length polymorphism)
due to their robustness and massive screening of the genome
(Cuesta et al., 2010). An additional advantage is that these techniques
can be applied to different species without prior genetic
knowledge.