IN-VITRO FERTILIZATION WITH ISOLATED HIGHER-PLANT GAMETES

In vitro fertilization techniques with isolated angiosperm gametes hav e been developed recently. Zygotes, embryos and fertile plants can now be obtained from individual fusions of pairs of sperm and egg cells. This allows the examination of especially early developmental processe s, immediately after fertilization, with living material that is indep endent from the maternal tissue. These techniques are likely to have a widespread impact in plant developmental biology. In addition, they a llow the possibility of isolating gamete-specific and fertilization-in duced genes, for studying gamete interaction and gametic hybridization . Thus, they clearly demonstrate potential for fundamental and applied plant research.