IN VITRO SELECTION FOR SALT TOLERANCE IN LENTIL (LENS CULINARIS MEDIK)

While plant breeding methods have been diverted toward improve of real crop yield in drought and salinity conditions, the achievement of plant cell culture and regeneration of plants from mutant cells is increasingly in improvement. Tissue culture technique provides the possibility of selection of specific genotypes with their fast multiplication. In this course, regeneration is applied in two direct and indirect methods. In direct method, the meristemic tissues are cultured and then direct organogenesis has been used for regeneration of plant under salinity condition. In indirect method, after callus generation, produced calli are cultured in Mourashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with different NaCl concentrations to select cell masses that continue their growth in this media. After transferring to the medium without salt, we can study their growth. With secondary transfer of these selected calli to the salty culture medium, salt tolerance must be repeated again. These calli are placed in shoot and root regeneration medium to produce a perfect plant. This method not only causes increasing of narrow genetic diversity of this plant via somaclonal diversity, but also provides the possibility of multiplication of many genetically engineered varieties.