Production of Sweet Cherry Hybrids (Silej-Delamarka and

Embryo culture of hybrid seeds that are not able to germinate for any specific reason as well as sweet cherry hybrid seeds with germination problem is one of the methods used in fruit trees breeding programs. Embryo cultures are widely applied in stone fruits breeding programs especially in inter specific hybridization and crosses with early ripening parents. Some sweet cherry hybrid seeds have less than 1% germination, so this research was carried out in order to explore the possibility of embryo culture and rescue of two sweet cherry cultivars. Sweet cherry cultivars used were late ripening `Zard-Daneshkade’ and early ripening `Silej-Delamarka’. Embryos obtained from seeds of `Zard-Daneshkade’ from controlled hybridization (`Zard-Daneshkade’ × `Siah Mashhad’) and from open pollinated `Silej Delamarka’. The embryos were sterilized and then cultured on MS medium. The germination of embryos started from those embryos sampled 3 and 6 weeks after full bloom in `Silej Delamarka’ and `Zard-Daneshkade’ respectively. The growth of embryos was suitable when embryos were treated with 40 days and 60 days cold treatment on the immature and mature embryos respectively. Results showed that while germination of mature seeds in `Silej-Delamarka’ cultivar was 0% by conventional seed culture methods, the embryo culture successfully increased germination up to 30 and 60 percent on the embryos sampled 21 and 28 days after full bloom respectively. In addition, embryo culture of `Zard-Daneshkade’ cultivar, increased germination up to 60% in embryos sampled 42 days after full bloom and the maximum germination of 95% was obtained from embryos sampled 56 days after full bloom. Note that the germination of mature seeds via conventional method was 26.6%.