An effective chemical mutagenesis procedure for Petunia hybrida cell suspension cultures.

By using mercury(II)-chloride (HgCl2) and Dl-6-fluorotryptophan (6FT) as positive selection conditions we were able to show that N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (NG) is an effective mutagen for Petunia hybrida suspension cells.A number of the 205 calli resistant to HgCl2 and 17 calli resistant to 6FT were isolated. The highest mutation frequency was 1.0 x 10(-5) and 2.0 x 10(-6) for HgCl2 and 6FT, respectively. A preliminary characterization of the mutants is presented.A significant increase in the number of drug-resistant calli was only obtained at NG-concentrations (5-40 μg/ml) that had no observable effect on the survival of the mutagenized cultures.