Angela Ricci is a post-doc in the Plant Biotechnology Lab of the Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences at Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Bruno Mezzetti and Dr. Silvia Sabbadini. Their work is currently focused on developing efficient and reproducible in vitro protocols for regeneration and genetic transformation suitable for peach with the aim to stably express RNA interference (RNAi)-based gene constructs with the specific goal to induce Plum pox virus (PPV) resistance. This study examined several techniques to stimulate regeneration via somatic embryogenesis (SE) in expanding leaves and anthers as starting explants in the commercial peach rootstock GF677 (P. persica × P. amygdalus) and in several peach cultivars. Both expanding leaves of elongated in vitro shoot cultures and anthers from unopened flowers of one-year-old dormant cuttings were placed in different SE inducting media. The media consisted of McCown Woody Plant Medium (WPM) as basal salt supplemented with N6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) and 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) as plant growth regulators (PGRs). Although none of the media tested stimulated SE from the peach explants under evaluation, cream-colored calli, identified as pre-embryogenic structures, were obtained when anthers of peach cultivars ‘Big Top’, ‘Tardibelle’, and ‘Big Bang’ were placed on induction media supplemented with 4.4 µM BAP in combination with 4.5 or 9 µM 2,4-D. Considering the establishment of a suitable regeneration system through SE in peach as useful tool for genetic resistance against PPV, we suggest adjusting the concentrations and combinations of BAP as cytokinin and 2,4-D as auxin as the next step to induce SE from this type of plant material. This research was supported by New Plant and Vitroplant Italia, Italy. It was an honour to be awarded for this work.
Angela Ricci won the ISHS Young Minds Award for the best poster presentation at the International Symposium on In Vitro Technology and Micropropagated Plants at IHC2022 in France in August 2022.
Angela Ricci, Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Via Brecce Bianche 10, 60131 Ancona, Italy, e-mail: angela.ricci@pm.univpm.it
The article is available in Chronica Horticulturae