Abstract
Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is the major cereal crop in the Horn of Africa particularly in Ethiopia where it is staple food for about 50 million people. Its resilience to extreme environmental conditions and high in nutrition makes tef the preferred crop among both farmers and consumers. The efficiency of in vitro regeneration plays significant role in the improvement of crops. We investigated the efficiency of regeneration in 18 tef genotypes (15 landraces and three improved varieties) using three sizes of immature embryos (small, intermediate and large) as an explant. In vitro regeneration was significantly affected by the genotype and the size of the immature embryo used as a donor. Intermediate-size immature embryos which were 101-350 µm long led to the highest percentage of regeneration. Interestingly, the three improved varieties presented very low regeneration efficiencies whereas the landrace Manyi resulted in consistently superior percentage of in vitro regeneration from all three sizes of explants. The findings of this work provide useful insight into the tef germplasm amenable for the regeneration technique which has direct application in techniques such as transformation. It also signifies the importance of using tef landraces instead of improved varieties for in vitro regeneration.
Highlights
Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is a cereal crop extensively cultivated in the Horn of Africa where it is annually cultivated on about 3 million hectares of land in Ethiopia alone [1]
We investigated the efficiency of regeneration in 18 tef genotypes (15 landraces and three improved varieties) using three sizes of immature embryos as an explant
The efficiency of somatic embryogenesis was determined for the three sizes of immature embryos used as an explant as well as for the two types of embryos formed
Summary
Tef [Eragrostis tef (Zucc.) Trotter] is a cereal crop extensively cultivated in the Horn of Africa where it is annually cultivated on about 3 million hectares of land in Ethiopia alone [1] This extensive cultivation of the crop is related to some traits beneficial for farmers and consumers including, i) its tolerance to extreme environmental biotic and abiotic conditions, ii) its gluten-free seeds, considered as a healthy food, and iii) high palatability of its straw by livestock. Despite all these useful traits, tef is considered as an orphan crop due to the little scientific research done on the crop. The recently published tef genome [5] will accelerate the breeding program if integrated with improvement methods such as tissue culture and genetic transformation
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