LABORATORY EVALUATION OF REGENERATES OF WHEAT HYBRID COMBINATIONS IN VITRO AND EX VITRO CONDITIONS

Drought is the combination of climatic conditions that leads to a long-term shortage of water in the soil and air. This is one of the most common abiotic stress factors that leads to significant losses of crop yield and the emergence of a threat to food security. Researchers are actively developing ways to create drought-resistant zoned varieties of economically important agricultural crops and especially cereals as the main food resource. Such varieties should maintain a relatively high yield rate with a shortage of water in the soil and air. The aim of the work was the laboratory evaluation in vitro and ex vitro of wheat regenerants formed in the embryo culture in vitro under conditions selective for the indicator "drought resistance". Methods of embryo culture in vitro, laboratory evaluation of caryopsis viability, histological analysis, as well as statistical processing of the received results were used. Under the conditions of in vitro experiments on the selective medium simulating drought by introducing mannit at the concentration of 8% as an osmotic, regenerants of 5 hybrid wheat combinations that showed tolerance to stress were obtained. It is shown that the development of regenerants in vitro and ex vitro pass according to the same phenological phases and in the same duration as donor plants. Regenerants form caryopsises of sufficiently high quality, which is confirmed by laboratory observations of their viability and histological analysis of seedlings.