Regeneration of fertile doubled haploid plants from colchicine-supplemented media in wheat anther culture

The effect of colchicine added to induction medium for the production of fe rtile doubled haploid plants after in-vitro anther culture was studied in w heat, Triticum aestivum L. For this, one winter and two spring wheat variet ies were used. Anther cultures of the three genotypes were treated with 0.0 3% colchicine for 3 days at the beginning of microspore induction. Colchici ne had no significant effect on anther response and embryoid production of the genotypes examined. However, in the winter wheat genotype 'Mv Szigma', colchicine caused a significant reduction in microspore-derived structures. A significant decrease was also observed in plant regeneration ability of two genotypes ('Vergina' and 'Acheloos') after colchicine treatment. In add ition, a significant reduction of the albinos produced was observed in all genotypes after colchicine treatment. In contrast, the regenerants obtained from the colchicine-supplemented induction media produced significantly hi gher percentages of fertile plants in all genotypes. However, the level of fertility, was significantly different among the fertile plants obtained. T his, together with the observation that in the case of the winter wheat var iety the colchicine treatment resulted in 100% completely fertile plants wi th a high seed-setting ability indicate that there is space for further imp rovement of the method when it is applied to spring cultivars. Finally, the increased number of seeds per 100 plated anthers obtained from all three g enotypes after colchicine treatment, clearly demonstrates that the addition of colchicine to induction medium was superior to the conventional anther culture method and it could therefore be introduced into wheat breeding pro grammes.