The use of nurse culture in the development of haploid clones in tomato.

A nurse culture procedure and an appropriate medium are described for obtaining vigorous haploid clones originating from single tomato pollen grains. The grains are plated on filter-paper disks mounted over intact anthers placed on a modified Murashige and Skoog medium. The plating efficiencies of such pollen cells ranges between 0 and 60%. The variability in the plating efficiencies and the potential use of this technique over that of anther culture are discussed.