One hundred years of zygotic embryo culture investigations

Abstract

SummaryIsolation of zygotic embryos from seeds and their culture in a defined medium, initiated by Hannig in 1904, has proved to be a promising method to study the factors that control growth and differentiation of embryos. Using this technique, several investigations have focused on the carbohydrate and nitrogen nutrition during germination of cultured seed embryos and on the effects of plant hormones on their morphogenesis. Culture of immature embryos leads to their germination into weak seedlings, skipping the later stages of embryogenesis, by a process known as precocious germination. Progressively smaller embryos have been cultured by supplementation of the medium with coconut milk or hormonal additives or by osmotic adjustment of the medium by high concentrations of sucrose or mannitol. Although methods have not been developed for large-scale isolation and culture of zygotes, zygotes of maize isolated from embryo sacs and those obtained by in vitro fertilization have been grown in culture into full-term embryos. Embryo culture techniques are widely used to rescue embryos from seeds of wide crosses which usually abort and to overcome dormancy of recalcitrant seeds.

Growth regulators and darkness increase efficiency in in vitro culture of immature embryos from peppers

“…These findings are in agreement with the reports of other authors in several species such as barley, Phaseolus coccineus or Capsella bursa-pastoris, among others (Monnier, 1995;Raghavan, 2003;Umbeck and Norstog, 1979) and, therefore, medium M 1 was chosen to assess the effect of initial dark incubation on in vitro embryo germination.…”

“…Embryo culture efficiency depends mostly on: i) genotype: different accessions may show different responses (Kothari et al, 2010), ii) embryo stage (Manzur et al, 2013;Raghavan, 2003), iii) media formulation: mineral salts, carbohydrates, growth regulators, nitrogen compounds, vitamins, etc (Monnier, 1995), and; iv) incubation conditions (i.e. temperature, light/ dark conditions) (Razdan, 2003).…”

A Cascade of Sequentially Expressed Sucrose Transporters in the Seed Coat and Endosperm Provides Nutrition for the Arabidopsis Embryo

“…Sucrose is used as a carbon and energy source for in vitro growth of immature embryos (Raghavan, 2003). To test whether exogenously supplied sucrose can promote embryo growth of the sweet11;12;15 mutant, in vitro embryo culture was performed.…”

Hybridization Using a New Male-sterile Germplasm as the Female Parent in Chinese Jujube

“…The successful production of plants from the cultured embryos largely depends upon embryo age and medium composition (Raghavan, 2003;Ramming, 1990;Sharma et al, 1996;Zhu et al, 2013). Embryos of Chinese jujube abort mainly at hard stone stage of fruit.…”