“…The efficiency of protoplast isolation and their quality, expressed by cell viability, are governed by several factors including: genotype; type of source tissue; mechanical procedures on source tissue (slicing or removal of the epidermis); conditioning of source tissue before enzyme maceration (dark or osmotic treatment); conditions of tissue digestion (i.e., composition of enzyme mixture, temperature and duration of enzyme incubation, pH of the enzyme solution, gentle agitation), and the method of protoplast isolation (Frearson et al 1973;Rao and Prakash 1995;Ortin-Parraga and Burgos 2003;Sinha et al 2003;Davey et al 2005c;Kiełkowska and Adamus 2012). When large populations of protoplasts are required, which is the norm for fusions, from 1 g of FW, between 10 5 and 10 7 viable cells should be released (Davey et al 2010). Though the protoplast yield obtained in the present study, varying from 1.4 to 4.5 9 10 6 , was genotypedependent, for all accessions it was even high enough to perform protoplast fusion.…”