Genetic variation is an essential component of any
conventional crop breeding programme. The adoption of
new technologies such as plant tissue culture and recombinant
DNA may help in achieving some of the goals to
increase food production. There is a great potential of celland tissue culture techniques in plant improvement,
provided plants can be readily regenerated in large numin
large numbers (Jain et al., 1998). Induction of somatic
embryogenesis is an attractive approach in plant tissue
culture, as the somatic embryos being single cell origin,
are more suitable for genetic, breeding and mutation research.