Polyembryony in Citrus. Accumulation of seed storage proteins in seeds and in embryos cultured in vitro.

Citrus exhibits polyembryonic seed development, an apomictic process in which many maternally derived embryos arise from the nucellus surrounding the developing zygotic embryo. Citrus seed storage proteins were used as markers to compare embryogenesis in developing seeds and somatic embryogenesis in vitro. The salt-soluble, globulin protein fraction (designated citrin) was purified from Citrus sinensis cv Valencia seeds. Citrins separated into two subunits averaging 22 and 33 kD under denaturing sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. A cDNA clone was isolated representing a citrin gene expressed in seeds when the majority of embryos were at the early globular stage of embryo development. The predicted protein sequence was most related to the globulin seed storage proteins of pumpkin and cotton. Accumulation of 33-kD polypeptides was first detected in polyembryonic Valencia seeds when the majority of embryos were at the globular stage of development. Somatic Citrus embryos cultured in vivo were observed to initiate 33-kD polypeptide accumulation later in embryo development but accumulated these peptides at only 10 to 20% of the level observed in polyembryonic seeds. Therefore, factors within the seed environment must influence the higher quantitative levels of citrin accumulation in nucellar embryos developing in vivo, even though nucellar embryos, like somatic embryos, are not derived from fertilization events.