Field performance of olive plants propagated through micropropagation and somatic embryogenesis.

Mature olive plants of the cv Maurino were obtained through micropropagation and mature somaclonal plants of the cv Frangivento were produced by somatic embryogenesis.The aim of this study was to evaluate in the field the clonal fidelity of the olive plants propagated by micropropagation and somatic embryogenesis.Morphological characterization of the different types of plants was carried out and relationships were studied based on cluster analysis.The micropropagated plants and cutting plants ( control plants) showed very high similarity while the somatic-olive plants showed different developmental behavior. The plants showed two types of main variation: BOS (bushy-olive somaclone) characterized by reduced plant height and COS (columnar-olive somaclone) characterized by increased plant height. The cause of the variations is unknown,but the research shows the presence of somaclonal variation in in vitro which could be found in olive plants regenerated through somatic embryogenesis.