Strategic approaches to propagate berry crop nuclear stocks using a bioreactor

Most berry crops include the members of the genera: Fragaria (strawberry, Rosaceae), Rubus (brambles: raspberry and blackberry; Rosaceae), Vaccinium (blueberry, cranberry and lingonberry; Ericaceae), Ribes (currant and gooseberry; Grossulariaceae) and Vitis (grapes, Vitaceae). Global berry production has increased significantly with the understanding of the important role of dietary fruits in maintaining human health. While berries are enjoyed huge popularity among consumers, progress of plant tissue culture, resulting in great advances in micropropagation, has occurred. Automation using bioreactor micropropagation in liquid media has been advanced for reducing propagation costs. Trueness-to-type in micropropagated plants is a major concern in micropropagation of berry crops and molecular strategies have been developed to reduce the variation that can occur in in vitro culture. The paper describes progress in berry propagation in vitro in liquid media using bioreactors and its improvement for commercial production. The paper also describes the assessment of genetic fidelity, uniformity, stability and true-totypeness among donor and tissue culture berry plants using molecular markers.