Somatic Embryogenesis in Pinus spp.

Somatic embryogenesis (SE) has been the most important development for plant tissue culture, not only for mass propagation but also for enabling the implementation of biotechnological tools that can be used to increase the productivity and wood quality of plantation forestry. Development of SE in forest trees started in 1985 and nowadays many studies are focused on the optimization of conifer SE system. However, these advances for many Pinus spp. are not sufficiently refined to be implemented commercially. In this chapter, a summary of the main systems used to achieve SE in Pinus spp. is reported.