Response of Sucrose, PGRs and pretreatments on another culture efficiency in broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica Plenck.)

Broccoli (Brassica oleracea L. var. italica Plenck) a member of family Brassicacea is one of the nutritious cole crop. It is known for its taste, flavor, nutritive and medicinal properties. Broccoli contains the compound namely, glucoraphanin, which can be processed into an anti-cancerouus compound sulphoraphane (Kumari and Katoch 2016) [10]. Being a native of Mediterranean region, the diversity of broccoli in India is very less. One of the major bottlenecks for broccoli breeders is the availability of germplasm. Broccoli is cross-pollinated crop and to develop a new inbred through conventional breeding usually takes at least five generations of inbreeding and backcrossing to reach the same goal of recovering genetically stable lines through conventional breeding approaches. For the development of hybrid(s), inbred lines are required and the development of inbred lines is a time consuming task. Androgenesis via anther/microspore culture offers an alternative for the development of new inbred lines in comparatively short-time thereby, reducing the cost incurred in the conventional breeding. The successful proportion of androgenic plantlets production depend on some critical factors including genotype, physiology of the donor plant, microspores/pollen grains stage, culture medium, sucrose concentrations, plant growth regulators and pretreatment temperatures. The present study intends to investigate the effects of different plant growth regulators, different concentrations of sucrose content and various pretreatment temperatures and incubation periods on Anther culture efficiency of broccoli.