Somoclonal Variations and Induced Mutations - In general, mutagenic treatments are not applied to cell cultures for the recovery of somaclonal variants. But in those studies where mutagenic treatments were of used, usually an increase in the frequency of somaclonal variants was observed.

In some cases, mutagenesis was reportedly necessary for the recovery of the specific variant being isolated. However, mutagenesis should be avoided as far as possible in view of the undesirable features associated with such treatments.

The frequency of useful somaclonal variations appears to be surprisingly high. For example, in sugarcane, 5% of the 235 somaclones were more resistant to Fiji disease than the control.