Current application of anther culture as a tool for improvement of horticultural crops

Anther culture is one of the plant biotechnology tools utilized for creation of haploid and spontaneous dihaploid plants from different horticultural crops. Androgenesis can be defined as a set of biological processes leading to an individual that genetically originated exclusively from anther microspores that represent the mail genotype. The main objective of in vitro anther culture is to obtain dihaploid homozygous lines with high practical value for breeders, but research in this area also have theoretical importance for fundamental biological sciences. After spontaneous, or induced genome doubling, dihaploids that are completely homozygous can be utilized differently in fundamental and practical research programmes. From the standpoint of plant breeding, androgenesis has a power to reduce the typical 7–9 inbreeding generations necessary to stabilize a hybrid genotype to only one. It is the key advantage of dihaploid technology in the context of plant breeding.Since pepper, tomato and eggplant are one of the most important Solanaceae crops worldwide, the improvement of their diversity is possible by engagement of the methods of classical breeding, but also by plant biotechnology which can advance the breeding process. During the past years, in vitro anther culture research of numerous horticultural crops is extended although its successful application depends on different factors. Hence, in vitro anther culture is one of the biotechnological tools which is often exploited in different solanaceous and other horticultural species pre-breeding programmes