The discovery that pollen grains could develop into embryos was made by accident with Datura by Guha and Masheshwari in 1964.
Anther culture is a procedure for obtaining haploid (half the chromosome number) plants from normally diploid plants. Anther culture is used in plant breeding to produce haploid plants to allow crossing between species with different chromosome number.
The procedure has been described for tobacco, datura, potato, rape seed, cereals and grasses.
