4.2. Colchicine Treatment ProceduresColchicine (Sigma-Aldrich®, Saint Louis, MO, USA) was prepared from a stock solu- tion of colchicine, previously dissolved in a 1% (v/v) solution of dimethylsulfoxide (Synth®). Five concentrations were tested in this experiment: 0.00 μM; 250 μM; 500 μM; 750 μM and 1000 μM, combined with four immersion times: 6, 12, 18 and 24 h.Treatments with colchicine were applied to seeds collected and stored from the Blc. hybrid and used as explants, and to protocorms also obtained from the germination of the same seeds, but after 90 days of in vitro cultivation in the culture medium described in Section 4.1. For seed treatment, 5 mg fresh mass of seeds per treatment and 15 protocorms per replication (60 per treatment) were used for this study (Figure 8). The graphical abstract with step-by-step experiment is also presented (Figure 9).For the seeds, the different concentrations of colchicine were applied as pre-treatment, by the immersion of seeds in solutions containing different concentrations of colchicine, using a 250 mL Erlenmeyer flask kept in a horizontal rotary shaker at 60 rpm and in dark conditions at 25 ± 1 ◦C during exposure times. After exposure time, seeds were subjected to asepsis and inoculated in vitro in a germination culture medium, as described in Section 4.1.