Development of doubled haploid lines by means of in vitro microspore culture has been increasingly used for homozygous line production in breeding programmes of Brassica crops due to a possibility of significant time reduction of cultivar development. Whereas this method is routinely used in oilseed rape (Brassica napus), it is still difficult to apply microspore culture techniques to practical breeding of some vegetable brassicas. The main difficulties are the very low embryo yield and insufficient regenerative ability of microspore-derived plants in many of Brassica oleracea genotypes (CARLOS, DIAS 1999;RUDOLF et al. 1999). Very often abnormal embryos occur which need to be subcultured many times to induce normal shoots (KUGINUKI et al. 1999). Direct and rapid plant regeneration is very important for eliminating cytogenetic abnormalities and improving the efficiency of doubled haploid system. Our previous studies (VYVADILOVÁ et al. 1998a(VYVADILOVÁ et al. ,b, 2001 aimed to increase the efficiency of the microspore culture technique, especially by investigating factors affecting pollen embryogenesis and testing the embryogenic responsibility in a broad range of genotypes from Brassica oleracea collection and some breeding materials. The previously optimized microspore culture procedure was used in this study, which was directed at increasing the efficiency of whole plant production. Obtained doubled haploid lines will be evaluated for agronomic and quality traits with an emphasis on fungal disease and virus resistance and promising lines will be used in breeding programmes.
MATERIAL AND METHODSBrassica oleracea genotypes including several botanical varieties such as cabbage, cauliflower and kohlrabi used for experiments were selected according to the previous results regarding the embryogenic responsibility. Eight cultivars and landraces of head cabbage (convar. capitata L.) var. alba DC. and var. rubra DC.; four kohlrabi (var. gongylodes L.) open-pollinated cultivars and one self-pollinated line, one commercial F1 hybrid and three experimental hybrids of cauliflower (var. botrytis L.) were used for experiments. After vernalization for 4 months at 4°C in a cold room plants of cabbage and kohlrabi were grown in the growth chamber under controlled environmental conditions with a 16 h photoperiod and day/night temperature 18/12°C. Cauliflower plants were grown in isolation cages in the openair conditions. The microspore culture technique was modified to make it applicable to a wider spectrum of genotypes (VYVADILOVÁ et al. 2001). Green cotyledonary embryos about 5 mm in size were subcultured (for 5 to 7 days) on differentiation medium with benzylaminopurine, indolyl acetic acid and 2% sucrose, solidified by 0.8% agar (Table 1). Afterwards two thirds of both cotyledons were cut off and embryos were transferred onto regeneration medium without phytohormones, with 1% sucrose and 1% agar (Table 2) More than 400 regenerants of R 1 generation were derived in kohlrabi, cabbage and cauliflower by means of different mod...