Year: 1992
Type: article
Abstract: Embryo culture can by-pass yew ( Taxus ) seed dormancy and produce large population of seedlings to be screened for the anticancer drug, taxol, production. Immature linear embryos from seeds of T. baccata, T. brevifolia. T. cuspidata , and T. media were dissected and cultured. B5 medium supported the best embryonic growth during the initial two week's culture for T. cuspidata and T. baccata . T. brevifolia grew faster on MS medium. Weak embryo dormancy was encountered in T. brevifolia and T. cuspidata from the mature seeds but not from the immature ones. No embryonic growth had been observed in T. media dissected from mature seeds due to strong dormancy. Developing embryos were subsequently transferred to 1/2X B5 medium for germination. Rooting percentage in the mature seed derived T. brevifolia embryos increased from 12.5 to 63.6 when 30 μM GA 3 was added to the initial medium. Several hundreds of seedlings of T. baccata. T. brevifolia and T. cuspidata had been acclimatized to the greenhouse conditions. The taxol content of resultant T. cuspidata seedlings was 0.027% (dry weight), while that of T. brevifolia obtained from the wild twig was 0.030%.
Source: HortScience
Authors: Ching-yeh Hu, Lee Wang, Bernard Wu
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2126776313