Anther culture is becoming an accepted procedure for the production of isogenic diploid lines from the embryogenic haploid tissues. Although the technique has proven to be difficult with corn, success is possible. In all previously reported work, however, stamens were derived from tassels.

In this study, stamens were obtained from the ears of the anther-ear mutant (an1). Ears were harvested when the anthers contained meicoytes at the 'uninucleate' stage and were wrapped in 'Saran Wrap' and stored in the dark for 8 days at 10 C. They were then surface sterilized with 10% 'Javex' and rinsed with sterile water. The anthers were removed and cultured in plastic petri dishes and sealed with 'Para Film'. Two media were tested: 1) YP medium (Genovesi and Collins, Crop Sci. 22:1137-1144, 1982) with TIBA (0-1 mg/1), casein hydrolysate (500- mg/l), myo-inositol (100 mg/l) and sucrose (120 g/l) and 2) MS medium with proline (1500 mg/l), kinetin (5 X 10^-7M), myo-inositol (100 mg/l) and sucrose (60 g/l). Each 60 mm plastic petri dish contained 4 ml of autoclaved liquid or agar (0.6%) medium.

After approximately 6 weeks in the dark at 25 C white calli were produced from some cultured anthers and the results are summarized as follows:

The bulk of the calli grew but remained non-organogenic. A few plantlets have been recovered and are presently being reared in the light on N6 medium. While no chromosome counts are yet available, there seems little doubt that the calli were derived from the sporogenous tissue.

While this represents a novel use of "ear-derived" anthers, the significance and utility of this observation remains obscure.

V.R. Bommineni and R.I. Greyson