Plants generally have the highest regenerative ability because they show a high degree of developmental plasticity. Although the basic principles of plant regeneration date back many years, understanding the cellular, molecular, and physiological mechanisms based on these principles is currently in progress. The aim of this work was to evaluate the components of the genetic mean values and variances of the in vitro culture response in a cross between cultivar ‘Caimanta’ of the cultivated L. esculentum as the high regeneration capacity genotype and accession LA722 of the exotic L. pimpinellifolium as the low regeneration capacity genotype. The callus percentage (C, number of cultures that only produced callus · 100/total number of explants), the regeneration percentage (R, number of cultures that differentiated into completely developed shoots and/or primordial · 100/ total number of explants) and the productivity rate (PR, total number of completely developed shoots/ total number of cultures) were evaluated 30 days after culture initiation in the parents, F1, F2 and backcrosses. The in vitro culture response was controlled by gene action of complete dominance of the cultivated genome over the exotic one. Genetic interaction was not detected in these sets of data. The narrow sense heritability (h2) values were 0 for C and R, and 0.62 for PR. In consequence, genetic variability was mostly non-additive for both callus and regeneration percentages, while it was mostly additive for the productivity rate.

Callus production - Lycopersicon - In Vitro - Plant genetic resources - Regeneration capacity