Anther culture of Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench

Abstract

Anther culture of Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench I. Effect of panicle pretreatment, anther incubation temperature and 2,4-D concentration 15 Abstract. In a study of anther culture in Sorghum bicolor it was found that culture incubation temperature had a significant effect on yields of microspore-derived callus. A temperature of 33°C was superior to 25 °, 28 ° or 37 ° C. With fresh, unpretreated material, callus was produced only from anthers incubated at 33 ° C.Panicle pretreatment at 7 ° , 14 ° , 20 ° , 25 ° or 28 ° C either had no effect or significantly decreased callus yield.Comparison of culture media containing a range of concentrations of 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (0-3.0 mg 1-1) showed that callus yield increased significantly with concentration up to 2.5 mg1-1 and then declined slightly. Although 1174 calluses were produced, subsequent differentiation was poor and only four albino plants were regenerated.

Retrospect on in vitro androgenesis of sorghum (Sorghum bicolor)

“…Research geared towards the optimization of a doubled haploid development protocol for sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench] by Rose et al (1986) represents one of the earliest works in the crop.…”

“…The above examples go to reiterate that stress is the major trigger in inducing microspore embryogenesis from many monocots and dicots as pointed out by Touraev et al (1997). Many of the existing protocols utilize one or more of the common stress inducing components: heat shock, cold shock, carbohydrate or nitrogen starvation and colchicine pre-treatment (Indrianto et al, 1999), but rest for the work of Rose et al (1986), literature for pre-treatment in sorghum anther culture is largely lacking. Rose et al (1986) opined that inductive benefits of pre-treatment maybe partly offset by the acceleration of production of polyphenols in the anther wall in sorghum.…”

“…Many of the existing protocols utilize one or more of the common stress inducing components: heat shock, cold shock, carbohydrate or nitrogen starvation and colchicine pre-treatment (Indrianto et al, 1999), but rest for the work of Rose et al (1986), literature for pre-treatment in sorghum anther culture is largely lacking. Rose et al (1986) opined that inductive benefits of pre-treatment maybe partly offset by the acceleration of production of polyphenols in the anther wall in sorghum. According to them, tissue damage in sorghum tend to stimulate production of polyphenols, also referred to by some authors as lethal browning (Ko, Su, Chen, & Chao, 2008), therefore causing death to the developing microspores.…”

“…Unfortunately for the crop, there hasn't been a reproducible culture medium. Rose at al. (1986) reported a total of 1,174 anther-derived calli induced on liquid potato extract (Chuang, Ouyang, Chia, Chou, & Ching, 1978) with 9% sucrose (w/v), 0.5 mg/L kinetin, and different concentrations of 2,4-D incubated in darkness at 33°C.…”

Genetic Transformation of Plants

“…A wide range of sorghum explants, either for somatic embryogenesis or for organogenesis, has been tested to establish a dependable regenerable tissue culture system. These explants include immature embryos (Gamborg et al 1977; Thomas et al 1977;Dunstan et al 1978Dunstan et al ,1979Brar et al 1979;Ma and Liang 1987), mature embryos (Thomas et al 1977;Cai et al 1987), immature inflorescences (BretteIl et al 1980;Boyes and Vasil 1984;Cai and Butler 1990;Kaeppler and Pedersen 1997), seedlings (Masteller and Holden 1970;Brar et al 1979;Davis and Kidd 1980;Smith et al 1983;Godwin and Chikwamba 1994), leaf fragments (Wernicke and BretteIl 1980) and anthers (Rose et al 1986). However, the success of the genetic transformation achieved in sorghum so far has been established with embryogenic cultures initiated from immature embryos or immature inflorescences.…”