Colchicine and osmotic stress for improving anther culture efficiency on long grain temperate and tropical japonica rice genotypes

Abstract

Anther culture is an efficient tool to obtain new plant varieties or improve the existing ones. In rice, this procedure is performed in two steps, induction of calli from anthers and regeneration of plantlets from the calli. Genotype highly influences the efficiency of anther culture, so the media used in each step must be optimized. In this study, we tested different media for two temperate japonica rice varieties, NRCV and PL12, and two tropical japonica rice varieties that had been never tested before, 303012 and 303013. We found that induction media with 150 mg · L-1 of colchicine worked best for NRCV, 303012 and 303013. Colchicine-free induction media gave the best results with PL12. Referring to the regeneration, GERM media provided the best regeneration rates, and SARM media worked best in the case of PL12, 303012 and 303013. The presence of colchicine in the induction media was also related to the obtention of double haploid plantlets. This study has shown the importance of genotype in the performance of rice anther culture, has optimized it for the NRCV and PL12 varieties, and has set a first study on 303012 and 303013 varieties in anther culture.