Field performance of cryopreserved seed-derived tomato plants and post-thaw survival of viral-infected meristems

The effectiveness of different cryopreservation techniques of tomato meristems isolated from viral-infected plants ‘Irishka’ cultivar was determined. The pieces of stem were protected with dimethyl sulfoxide and propylene glycol and cooled in vapour phase of liquid nitrogen (–170 °C). For the vitrification and droplet-vitrification protocols, the meristems were treated with loading solution and dehydrated with different plant vitrification solutions (PVS1 modified, PVS2, 88 % PVS3, PVSN). The samples were placed to sterilized aluminum foil pieces, in 1.2 ml cryovials or in 50 µl aluminum pans for differential scanning calorimetry and were directly immersed into liquid nitrogen. Acсording to the dehydration technique, the meristems were dehydrated with sterile airflow for 120 min. The post-thaw survival rates of meristems (from 34.2 to 78.5 %) were observerved only for 50 µl aluminum pans and airflow dehydration. We determined the productivity of plants, obtaned from cryopreserved seeds (‘Seven’, ‘Potiron Ecarlate’ and ‘Druzhba’ cultivars). We observed increasing in total and marketable yields for the plants grown from the cryopreserved seeds for all the cultivars. Total number of diseased plants decreased by 33 % for ‘Seven’, for ‘Potiron Ecarlate’ it did by 6.7 %, for that of ‘Druzhba’ the total percentage of sick and healthy plants did not differ after seeds cryopreservation.