Regeneration of anther-derived plants from pentaploid hybrids of Festuca arundinacea × Lolium multiflorum

Abstract

Anther culture was used to generate progeny from pentaploid F1 hybrids of Festuca arundinacea (2n = 6x = 42) with Lolium multiflorum (2n = 4x = 28). Of 6360 anthers cultured, 676 green and 3460 albino plantlets were regenerated. Large differences in the anther culture response were observed among the F1 hybrids with the regeneration efficiency ranging from 0 to 28.8 green plants per 100 anthers cultured. All regenerants were less vigorous than the F1 hybrids and considerable morphological variation was present in such characters as plant height, leaf length and width, and the type and length of inflorescences. Among 295 plants which flowered during the first growing season only 38 were male fertile with pollen stainability ranging from 7.7% to 84.7%. Chromosome numbers in 170 analyzed regenerants ranged from 14 to 42 and fell into three groups: 14 to 21, 28, and 30 to 42. The experiment demonstrated that generation of large populations of androgenic progeny was feasible.