Abstract
The microspore and anther cultures have been used in plant breeding since the first reports on embryogenesis from pollen of Datura innoxia in 1960´s. Large numbers of studies have been focused on formation of homozygous double haploid plants in many important crops by both methods.
Microspore embryogenesis is an elegant system for a selection for dominant and recessive traits in haploid plants and after artificial diploidization of them, the plants homozygous for all genes can be obtained. Reports on employment of the anther cultures are more frequent in contrast to isolated microspore cultures due to a more simple technical handling, despite the fact that there is generally a lower efficiency of this method for doubled haploids production than in pure microspore cultures.
Moreover, the anther cultures lead to somatic tissue–derived plants and thus are used as the method for the somatic embryogenesis.