Sesame is an important oil seed crop of India. Although sesame is a self pollinated crop high levei of heterosis has been reported. Development of alloplasmic lines using wild species is an aiternatlve to hand emascuiation and pollination. The utilization of wild relatives in hybridization programme is however limited because of the existence of cross in-compatibility and the frequency of hybrids obtained through embryo culture was very low. Hence there is a need to multiply F1 plants in-vitro so that the F1 plants are transferred to the field successfully. For large scale transformation programmes It is necessary to have an efficient method of regeneration from the chosen expiant. In this study attempts were made to produce multiple shoots from different expiants using different levels of BAP and kinetin. In cultivated species cultlvars DS-1 and E-8, explant cultured on MS medium containing BAP was found to be better compared to kinetin. In contrast to this, wild species S. occidentale and S. radiatum showed better response when cultured in the medium containing kinetin. Among different levels of BAP and Kinetin, MS with BAP and 8 mg/l kinetin produced maximum number of shoots in both cuitivated and wild species respectively.
Sesame, multiple shoot regeneration, S. occidentale, S. radiatum, cytokinins
