Culture of buckwheat embryos in Petri dishes to speed up the breeding cycle

Yingjie Wang and Clayton Campbell

Kade Research Ltd. 135 13 Street. Morden, Manitoba, Canada R6M 1E9

Yingjie Wang and Clayton Campbell. 1999. Culture of buckwheat embryos in Petri dishes to speed up the breeding cycle. Fagopyrum 16: 37-41.

Abstract: Mature buckwheat embryos were cultured using different methods to determine a rapid and inexpensive culture technique. Four methods were tried these being, test tube with solid medium, Petri dish with tissue paper soaked by media, beaker with liquid media, and beaker with tap water. In the beaker treatments, emerging embryos were not encouraged possibly due to lack of air exchange. There was no significant difference found in the number of embryos that germinated in test tube or Petri dish treatments, however, seedlings in the Petri dish treatment developed significantly better than those in the test tube treatment. Therefore, the culture of mature buckwheat embryos in test tubes on solid media can be replaced by culturing them in Petri dishes with liquid media. Culturing the embryos on tissue paper, soaked by liquid media, appears to improve both nutrient absorption and aeration required for embryo growth and development and thus results in good quality seedlings. After the embryos were transferred from beakers into the Petri dishes, seedling were also found to grow better in ½ MS medium than in the tap water, therefore additional nutrients beyond supplied by the water were necessary for seedling development. The Petri dish method is a simple, rapid, and economic way to culture embryos and for speeding up the breeding cycle. The present study demonstrates the possibility of applying this method to other crops in culturing mature and immature embryos, as well as rescuing embryos in wide hybridizations.

Key words: interspecific crosses, seed dormancy, tissue culture, embryo rescue