Pollen Cryopreservation: Advances and Prospects

Cryopreservation is one of the most promising techniques applied for the long-term conservation of various plant genetic resources ex situ. Tremendous progress has been made in this field for the last 30–40 years. Cryobanks have been established in various parts of the world as a strategy to conserve difficult-to-conserve species. Currently, it is estimated that over 10,000 accessions of vegetatively propagated crops starting from in vitro cultures are safely conserved for the long term through cryopreservation. Pollen cryopreservation is considered to be a complementary conservation strategy for crop species, and tremendous progress has been made in this area in the last few years. Pollen conservation promotes improved efficiency in breeding programs and germplasm conservation and exchange in the case of clonally propagated crops. In this chapter, we try to chart out the history of plant cryopreservation and how it has evolved as a technique and how it is applied for pollen conservation.