Shortening the germination time of Iranian yew (Taxus baccata sp.) through embryo culture

Yew plant is the main source of Taxol drug production. Paclitaxol with the brand name Taxol is the main drug in the treatment of various cancers. This plant has a long dormancy and difficult germination and due to the, high demand and indiscriminate harvesting in some areas, there is a risk of extinction of this very important plant. According to these conditions, it is necessary to use the biotechnology tools such as tissue culture and embryo culture to produce new seedlings for propagation and use them in other laboratory studies. In this research, first in the form of a completely randomized experiment design with 48 treatments and three repetitions, it was determined that the treatment of 21 days of keeping the seeds in water and growing them on ½ WPM. cultivation environments have the highest germination. In the next step, in order to shorten the germination time, the embryos were isolated in a sterile environment kept in sterile double distilled water on a refrigerated shaker for 5 days at a temperature of 4°C and cultured in two cultivation environments ½ WPM and ½ MS Variance analysis revealed that there is no significant difference between treatments in germination speed, so it can be concluded that young and fresh seedlings can be obtained in less time with this method.