Som. embryogenese TTI-GG

Plant regeneration is essential for plant breeding, propagation and production processes and therefore directly affects the ability of the ‘green’ sector to develop new genotypes that are optimised for grower and consumer-based traits. Somatic embryogenesis (SE), is the process in which vegetative cells are induced to form embryos. These embryos can be germinated and grown into plantlets that are identical to (clones of) the mother plant. Many commercially interesting vegetable crops and genotypes are recalcitrant or poorly responsive for SE, hampering their cost effective entry onto the market. This proposal aims to use live imaging and cell-specfic molecular analyses to develop a detailed mechanistic model for somatic embryo induction, and to use this knowledge to obtain practical solutions for inducing efficient SE in a germplasm-independent manner.