'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 CALLUS INDUCTION AND PLANT REGENERATION FROM IMMATURE AND MATURE EMBRYOS OF WINTER WHEAT (Triticum aestivum L.) GENOTYPES S. KEREŠA, M. BARIĆ, H. ŠARČEVIĆ, S. MARCHETTI, G. DRESNER Faculty of Agriculture, University of Zagreb, Croatia

Plants regeneration is one of the most critical steps of plant transformation. The objective of the present study was to investigate callus formation and plant regeneration from immature embryos in eight Croatian winter wheat cultivars, to find out the genotypes with the best regeneration capacity and compare this data with data of regeneration from mature embryos of the same cultivars. The winter wheat cultivars utilized in this study were: Kuna, Lipa, Banica, Magdalen, Žitarka, Edita, Hana and Barbara. Cultivars Edita and Žitarka regenerated the higher number of plants per immature embryo cultured (0.83, 0.90). Plant regeneration from mature embryos was poor and not in correlation with regeneration from immature embryos of same genotypes. The best regenerating cultivars will be used for Agrobacterium-mediated plant transformation.