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Life Science Research and Sustainable Development ISBN: 978-98-84663-33-9

amarant (1), barley (26), brome grass (1), buckthorn (1), buckwheat (8),
castor bean (1), chamomile (1), chrysanthemum (17), common bean (4),
cotton (2), cress (1), cucumber (1), durra (1), faba bean (4), fig (1),
USSR flax/linseed (3), fodder beet (5), grape (1), iris (5), kale (1), lettuce (1), 204
maize (12), millet (3), oat (3), onion (1), pea (8), pepper (1), plavine (1),
pomegranate (2), poplar (1), rapeseed (2), raspberry (1), rice (6), sainfoin
(2), sorghum (1), sour cherry (4), soybean (9), sudan grass (1), sunflower
(1), tobacco (4), tomato (2), vetch (1), watermelon (1), wheat (36), white
lupin (13), yellow lupin (2)
Vietnam groundnut (1), indian jujube (2), maize (2), peppermint (1), rice (18), 29
soybean (5),
Yugoslavia pepper (1) 1

Among these countries, while in six countries, the number of released mutant varieties exceeded
100. The top countries on the list are China, India, former USSR and Russia, The Netherlands, USA
and Japan (Table 2). However, the list would change if the mutant varieties developed in the
former FRG and GDR (in total 138 varieties including one variety recently released in Germany
were combined).

Table 2: Number of officially released mutant varieties in the top six countries (total 2,252)

Country Number of released mutant cultivars Percent of total

China P.R. 605 26.8
India 259 11.5
USSR + Russia 210 9.3
Netherlands 176 7.8
USA 128 5.7
Japan 120 5.3

The plant species with induced mutant varieties is a long one and recently reached 175 entities
(Table 3) as compared with 154 species in 1995 (Maluszynski, et al, 1995). This was mainly because
of an increase in the application of mutation techniques for the improvement of ornamental and
decorative plants in developing countries, where these plants have become important “cash
crops”. It is remarkable that the number of mutant varieties of vegetative propagated crops has
only slightly increased in spite of the availability of many in vitro culture methods, which should
have facilitated the development of new varieties.
A new FAO/IAEA Coordinated Research Project has been established this year to identify
constraints in the production of mutant varieties of fruit trees and to develop methods and
protocols for more efficient use of mutation techniques and related biotechnologies. The most
significant increase, compared to 1995, (Maluszynski, M., L. van Zanten, A. Ashri et al, 1995) was
observed in the number of new mutant varieties in crop species (494 new), mainly in seed
propagated crops (366 new mutant varieties). The distribution pattern among seed propagated
crops did not change very much. Mutant varieties of cereals are on the top of the list (1072)
followed by legumes (311), industrial (81), vegetables (66), oil crops (59) and other seed
https://jesjalna.org/Zoology-Publications/index.html 7 Department of Zoology, J. E. S. College, Jalna