ELS yields were significantly increased in all of the genotypes by the
addition of a 0.1 ml drop of AC to the microspore culture media
(Table 3). In no instances did the addition of AC have any detrimental effect
on ELSs yield. Therefore AC at a concentration of 0.05% seems to act
as a promoter of embryogenesis in the microspore culture of different
pepper genotypes. Although the more significant effect was observed
with the low responsive genotypes ‘04’ and ‘46’, it was observed that
even the high responsive ‘36’ responded positively to the addition of
AC. The magnitude of the response to the addition of AC varied with
the different genotypes. The best resultswere obtained with ‘46’with increases
in ELSs yield of 208.3%. For all the other accessions, the increasing
efficiency of AC on ELSs yield varied from 38.5% in ‘36’ to 171.2% in ‘04’.
The present results are in accordance with the observations of
Supena et al. (2006)who sawa significant increase in the in vitro androgenesis
of pepper on 1% ACmediumnomatter the lowand high responsive
microspore culture genotypes.
The explanation for the promotion of embryogenesis by AC is not yet
well clarified. AC possesses strong adsorptive properties and is usually
used in chemistry to absorb both gases and dissolved solids. When
added to tissue culture media, AC is commonly thought to remove
growth inhibitory substances exuded by tissues or present in the ingredients
of the medium, but it is now clear that promontory substances
can also be absorbed and made unavailable to the plant. The effects of
increasing concentrations of charcoal on the total embryo yield and
the yield of normal-looking embryos did not run in parallel, and 2%
charcoal impaired embryonic shoot development (Supena et al., 2006).