Screening & evaluation of agronomically valuable strawberry somaclones

Strawberry is very delicious fruit. It is not native to Bangladesh. Present study shows that the high incidence of somaclonal variations among the plants regenerated through callus phase that could be used in breeding programmes for improvement of strawberry. These somaclones were distinct from each other in terms of fruit and other horticultural characters, and have potential for commercial cultivation in Bangladesh. The RAPD profiles were generated through the amplification of the genomic DNA, extracted from the leaf samples of three selected variants and control plants, with fifteen random primers. The RAPD profiles generated with random primer AL-04 and O-05 showed distinctive plant specific polymorphic banding patterns that could be used for the detection of somaclonal variation in Strawberry.