Bioinformatic Tools in Crop Improvement - Crop Improvement: New Approaches and Modern Techniques - page 100

value in plant breeding. In recent years the use of tissue culture in combination with
radiation induced mutations have resulted in a number of desired genotypes in rice,
and a number of these have been used directly or indirectly in breeding programs
(Hoang et al. 2009 ; Rahman et al. 2012 ). Some web sites and URL for developing
mutant lines, analysis and use in crop breeding are detailed in Table 2.11 .
TILLING
Targeting induced local lesions in genomes (TILLING) was developed as a reverse-
genetics tool that provides an allelic series of induced point mutations in genes of
importance (Till et al. 2004 , 2006 ). Because high-throughput TILLING permits the
rapid and low-cost recovery of induced point mutations in populations of chemical-
ly mutagenised individuals, the methods employed have had a level of acceptance
and have yielded informationon various animal and crop plant species.
EcoTILLING
The TILLING methodology can also be used to explore allelic variations that ap-
pear in natural populations; this technology is called EcoTILLING (Comai et al.
2004 ; Wang et al. 2006 ). Several laboratory sites have established TILLING and/
or EcoTILLING centers for researches in the public domain (Barkley and Wang
2008 ). TILLING mutagenic lines and projects in rice, tomato, soybean and Arabi-
dopsis have been performed at the University of California, Davis Genome Centre.
RevGenUK
RevGenUK at the John Innes Centre provides TILLING service for population
studies and information in Medicago trunculata , Lotus japonica and Brassica rapa .
UTILLdb/ INRA
UTILLdb of INRA is another database for TILLING populations of pea and tomato
that provide an interface to search for TILLed crop lines based on phenotype de-
scriptions.
GeneSilencingTechniques
Although insertion mutagenesis is an effective method for generating loss-of-func-
tion mutants, it has severe limitations in use with redundant genes and lethal muta-
tions. To overcome these limitations, methods to interrupt gene expression have