Perpustakaan Digital ITB

Somatic embryogenesis offers an efficient technique for mass production of homogenous superior cocoa planting materials within a short time. However, each cocoa cultivar might develop different response upon regeneration in in vitro condition. Therefore, this study was performed to analyze the expression of Somatic Embryogenesis Receptor Kinase (TcSERK) and Baby Boom (TcBBM) genes which are involved in signaling pathway and transcription factor in cocoa somatic embriogenesis, respectively. Somatic embryos were induced on both petal and staminode explants of cocoa flowers from two different cultivars, namely Sca 6 and I04. RNA samples were isolated from each stage of somatic embryos and subjected to the gene expression analysis using RT-PCR and qPCR. The results showed that Sca 6 cultivar has higher proliferation rates, but the regeneration ability was lower than that in I04 cultivar. Histological analysis also indicated that I04 cultivar displays better somatic embryo quality compared with Sca 6 cultivar. In addition, gene expression analysis exhibited that TcSERK and TcBBM has different expression patterns during somatic embryo development. The highest TcSERK gene expression was obtained at the final stages of embryo regeneration, whereas TcBBM expressed highly during early stages of somatic embryo development. Selection of explants that have regeneration capabilities such as the petal part of I04 cultivar, will increase the efficiency of large scale seedling production through somatic embryogenesis.