Effect of cytokinins and light quality on adventitious shoot regeneration from leaflet explants of peanut (Arachis hypogaea)

Plant tissue culture and novel breeding techniques such as genome editing in the economically important crop Arachis hypogaea constitute potential for genetic improvement. Therefore, in this study, high-frequency in vitro regeneration via formation of adventitious shoots was described for different A. hypogaea lines. The leaflets of the primary leaves of 5-day-old seedlings were cultured for 16 weeks on Murashige and Skoog’s medium supplemented with equimolar concentrations (22.19 µM) of the cytokinins 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP); thidiazuron (TDZ); zeatin (Zea) or meta-topolin (MT), which was reduced to 7.40 µM after eight weeks plus 2.3 µM kinetin. Highest shoot regeneration percentages of 89.1% and 81.3% for BAP and TDZ containing media, respectively, were achieved in the line ’Jimmy’s pride’ with the maximum shoot number obtained on BAP. The regeneration percentages for three further lines were lower than 50%. Furthermore, the effect of different light qualities, applied using LEDs, and compared to fluorescent lamps was investigated. Shoot regeneration percentages did not improve significantly under the different LEDs, instead a pronounced effect on the regeneration efficiency of the culture temperature was observed which differed among the light treatments. However, fluorescent lamps can be replaced by red or blue LEDs without negative effects on shoot regeneration.