11. 19. Responsiveness to anther culture of Hordeum vulgare cv. 'Dissa' and its parents.
Bärbel Foroughi-Wehr and Wolfgang Friedt, Biologische Bundesanstalt fur Land- und Forstwirtschaft, Institut fur Resistenzgenetikt D-8059 Grünbach, W. Germany.
Earlier studies have demonstrated genotypic differences with regard to the success of anther culture in different species such as rice (Guha-Mukherjee 1973), Brassica napus (Thompson 1969), tobacco (Corduan 1972) and bread wheat (DeBuyser and Henry 1979; Schaeffer et al. 1979).
Our anther-culture work in barley also revealed marked genotypic differences regarding callus formation and plant regeneration. When anthers of more than 30 different spring barley crosses were cultured during 1979 the proportion of callusing varied between 5 and 73%. From 0.3 to 4.8% of the anthers sown gave rise to plants (Friedt and Foroughi-Wehr 1980).
The respective data of 7 out of 12 crosses involving cv. 'Trumph' are presented in Figure 1. Callus formation and plant regeneration are closely related (r=+O.90***) when both characters are based on the number of cultured anthers.
Fig. 1. Response to anther culture of seven spring barley crosses involving cv. 'Trumph'.
In earlier anther-culture studies with 19 different spring barley cultivars the six-row type 'Dissa' proved to be most responsive; 14.8% of the anthers plated showed callus-formation and plants were regenerated from 9% of the anthers. These findings were confirmed in subsequent experiments involving anther culture with no other genotype achieving a success rate as high as 'Dissa'.
In order to determine whether the outstanding responsiveness of 'Dissa' had been inherited, the response of 'Dissa' and its parents 'Amsel' and 'Glatta' were compared in a separate anther culture experiment.
Material and methods:
Cultivars 'Dissa' and 'Amsel' are of spring habit whereas 'Glatta' is a typical winter-barley. The latter was sown in pots in October 1978 and vernalised in the field for three months. ‘Dissa’ and ‘Amsel’ were sown in January 1979 and also grown at low temperatures until tillering. From the tillering stage onwards all three cultivars were kept at about 18°C under natural light in the same greenhouse. Anthers were collected at the stage of microspore development 4 to 5 according to our nomenclature (Gaul et al. 1976) and plated between April 23 and May 15, 1979. Media formulation and culture procedures all have been described previously (Foroughi-Wehr et al. 1976).
Results and discussion:
The experimental results are summarized in Table 1 and Figure 2. Callus f formation as well as the number of plant regenerated relative to the number of anthers plated was highest for 'Dissa'. The number of callusing anthers of 'Dissa' was more than double that of cv. 'Amsel' and about 5 times that of 'Glatta' but the reason remains unclear.
Fig. 2. Plant regeneration of barley cv. 'Dissa' and its parental cultivars 'Amsel' and 'Glatta'.
With regard to total plant regeneration 'Amsel' was almost as good as 'Dissa', whereas 'Glatta' showed much less success in this respect. However, many more green plants were produced from anther-callus of 'Dissa' compared with 'Amsel'. The relation of green to white plants regenerated was about 1:2 for 'Dissa', but 1:10 for 'Amsel'.
These findings are supported by the data of Malepszy and Grunewaldt (1974) who regenerated 56 white but only 2 green plants from anthers of 'Amsel'. The relatively high proportions of lethal albino-plants in the progeny of anther cultures of monocotyledoneous plants is still an unsolved problem, although some provisional explanations have been put forward recently (Chih-Chu et al. 1978).
Consequently, it is not possible to explain why anther-calluses of 'Dissa' produce greater numbers of green plants than its parents. There is also no indication of how this attribute has been inherited.
Nevertheless, regarding callus formation it may be concluded from the above results that the callusing ability of 'Dissa' was inherited from the parent 'Amsel', although conclusions as to the mode of inheritance of this feature cannot be drawn from the data presented here.
Experiments are under way to determine whether the callus-formation and plant-regeneration abilities of 'Dissa' can be transferred in cross breeding.
Acknowledgment:
We wish to thank Richard Pickering, Welsh Plant Breeding Station, Aberystwyth, for his generous help in preparing the English manuscript and for many useful comments.
References:
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