The Effect of Dissolved Oxygen Concentration on Growth and Differentiation of Carrot (Daucus carota) Tissue

For suspension cultures of carrot tissue there is a criticallevel of dissolved oxygen concentration. Below this level, dryweight increased linearly with time while cell numbers increasedexponentially, creating ‘meristematic-like’ conditionsin the culture. These conditions favoured differentiation intoplantlets by embryogenesis while conditions above the criticallevel, when both cell dry weight and cell numbers increasedexponentially, favoured plantlet differentiation by rhizogenesis.Different light treatments affected the yield of structuresformed but did not prevent oxygen from controlling the differentiationpathway.