Efficient method for generating citrus hybrids with polyembryonic Satsuma mandarin as the female parent.

Many citrus fruits have polyembryonic traits, and their seeds contain many nucellar embryos along with a single zygotic embryo, affecting the crossbreeding process. Generally, nucellar embryos are considered to have more vigorous growth than zygotic embryos. Therefore, the in vitro method using an embryo rescue culture is often chosen to obtain zygotic embryo-derived individuals. Nevertheless, hybrids can be obtained with a certain probability from the seeds sown in the soil. The in-soil method, which sows seeds in the soil, has distinct advantages over the in vitro method, including lower cost and simpler technology. However, the efficiency of obtaining hybrids from these methods has not been compared in detail. The current study evaluates the effectiveness of these methods for obtaining hybrids using polyembryonic Satsuma mandarin as the female parent. The number of mature embryos per seed using the in-soil method was less than one-third of that produced using the in vitro method. Although the in vitro method produced more hybrids than the in-soil method, the ratio of the hybrids to the resulting population was significantly higher in the in-soil method. Thus, the in-soil method was more efficient and practical than the in vitro method for selecting hybrids from polyembryonic Satsuma mandarin seeds. The observations of the individuals obtained using the in-soil method suggest that zygotic embryos were not poorer in growth than nucellar embryos when using our selected parental combinations. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11032-022-01324-6.