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This paper deals with problems of somatic embryogenesis (totipotency) of carrot cells in liquid culture and when dispersed in thin films of nutrient agar. The critical events that intervene between somatic cells and embryo plantlets during morphogenesis are delineated. Factors that affect the course of these events are described with special reference to the stimuli which permit the very smallest units to develop into organized structures. Special attention is directed to the importance of a protracted period of darkness and the use of an ‘embryo-conditioned medium’ as interacting stimuli that facilitate the early stages of development. Means of arresting and releasing the development of pro-embryonic units are discussed. Aspects of growth and form of the developing cultures are presented photographically at different levels. The behaviour of free protoplasts from pro-embryonic units is described and contrasted with that of intact totipotent cells. The significance of all these observations is examined in the light of practical applications and in relation to problems of development.

Five cereals and two related grasses were tested for adventitious shoot production from tissue cultures using methods concordant with those reported to be successful for cereals. The five cereals I wheat (Triticum aestivum L.), oats (Avena sativa L.), and maize (Zea mays L.) Pioneer hybrid 3369A, the Bolivian race Pororo and the Equadorian race Chococenõl were all found to proliferate in culture through an aberrant root‐like mechanism of growth which had the external appearance of callus. Two related species, teosinte (Zea mexicana Reeves and Mangelsdorf) and tripsacum (Tripsacum dactyloides L.), were less successful in culture, but grew in the same way. Oats, and probably Pororo and Chococeño, initiated presumptive shoot meristems directly from root vascular tissues within this root‐like growth. Hybrid maize and wheat initiated no shoot meristems and produced only roots. The occasional shoot production observed in wheat was discounted as simple carryover of existing shoot apices from the primary embryo cultures. This study suggests that the incidence of shoot regeneration in cultures of these cereals may be related more directly to adventitious bud formation on roots than to any controlled de novo organogenesis from undifferentiated callus.