Anther Culture Effectiveness in Producing Doubled Haploids of Cereals/ Putekðòu Kultûras Efektivitâte Graudaugu Dubultoto Haploîdu Izveidoðanâ

Our goal was to improve the method of obtaining double haploids (DH) by anther culture from Latvian breeding material for several agriculturally important cereals in Latvia: barley, spring and winter wheat. Hybrids from Latvian breeders were initial material. It was found that copper (2.5 mg/l) added to barley anther pre-treatment media and to both barley (C3) and wheat (liquid AMC) induction media, resulted in a higher percentage of green plants-regenerants. In general, the winter wheat hybrids exhibited lower embryogenesis than spring wheat hybrids. Obtaining a large number of DH lines from barley and wheat hybrids with unknown androgenesis response can be organized in two stages: first - selection from breeding initial material hybrids responsive in anther culture, which enables production of green plants-regenerants, and second - production of DH lines in a large scale from selected hybrids.