Increase of Disease Resistance in Celery Cultivars by Regeneration of Whole Plants from Cell Suspension Cultures

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Abstract
Callus cultures started from axillary buds of celery[Pium graveolens L. var. dulce (Miller) Pers.] cultivars Florida 683 and Tall Utah 52-70 HK were used to initiate shaken liquid cultures of single plant cells and cell clumps. Whole plants (somaclones) regenerated from embryoids formed in shaken cultures were screened in the greenhouse for reaction to three fungal and one bacterial pathogen of celery: Septoria apiicola (late blight), Cercospora apii (early blight), Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. apii (Fusarium yellows), and Pseudomonas cichorii (bacterial blight). Regenerated plants varied from highly susceptible to highly resistant to all four pathogens, whereas parent plants of Florida 683 were uniformly highly susceptible to all pathogens. Parent plants of Tall Utah 52-70 HK were moderately resistant to the Fusarium yellows pathogen and highly susceptible to the remaining pathogens. Resistance to a given pathogen appeared to arise independently from resistance to other pathogens, since plants were rarely found with high resistance to two or more pathogens. This technique may become an important way of introducing disease resistance into susceptible cultivars of celery.