Zantedeschia aethiopica Spreng. Improvement Through Biotechnology: Tissue Culture, Breeding and Genomic Resources

Calla lily is a very popular ornamental plant used for cut flower production and pot plant cultivation for gardens and landscape. The original nucleus came from South Africa, Cape Region and it had a wide and important development in America and Europe. In addition to the ornamental value several evidence of the use of different parts of the plant are reported in traditional medicine. The flowers are white with some light rose colour and differ for shape, leaves and color from the sub-group Aestivae Zanthedeschia species as Z. elliottiana or Z. jucunda. The species is susceptible to soft rot (Erwinia carotovora) an important disease, causing severe loss of material. The breeding programs both traditional or innovative are devoted to the development of new varieties with better ornamental traits as high yield, early flowering, large flowers and flower shape and to pathogen resistance. The faster propagation system is the micropropagation driven with high concentration of cytokinins (4 mg/l), the clonal lines are established in vitro or from meristem tips excision that contribute to the production of virus-free mother plants evaluated by molecular evidence, or rhizomes sterilization; rooting phase is easy as the acclimatization phase. Relatively few studies have been published concerning themolecular markers in genus Zantedeschia: RAPD (Random Amplified Polymorphic DNA), ISSR (Inter Simple Sequence Repeat), AFLP (Amplified and SSR (Simple Sequence Repeat) methods were used for cultivar identification and genetic variation assessment. More recently, sequencing, assembling, annotation of the chloroplast (cp) genomes of four species of Zantedeschia, including Z. aethiopica, with the Illumina sequencing technology, allowed to develop cpSSR markers with potential genetic diversity assessment and variety identification. In this paper a complete review of the more fruitful biotechnological approaches for the valorisation of the species are reported together with some original results coming from the work of the authors.