One of the major blocks in the improvement of cotton through genetic engineering is the lack of a means to regenerate complete plants from tissues of the many commercially important varieties of the Gossypium hirsutum and G. barbadense species. The successful introduction of foreign genetic material into C. hirsutum was demonstrated in several Coker varieties. The method of plant regeneration used in these studies was induction of somatic embryogenesis from callus cultures. The limitations of this technique to widespread application of gene transfer to commercial cotton are the restricted number of varieties which can be regenerated using this method and the introduction of genetic instability due to somaclonal variation.

A simple method for the regeneration of cotton from the isolated shoot apices of 3 to 7 day old cotton seedlings has been developed. This technique is not limited to species or variety and because the original apical meristem is employed, faithful reproduction of the plant genome is safeguarded. Complete and normal flowering plant of the Gossypium hirsutum varieties Coker 312, Paymaster 145, Stoneville 213, TAMCOT CAB-CS and the G. barbadense variety Pima S-6 have been obtained with this method.

The technique was developed for potential use in the transformation of cotton and has been used successfully, by this laboratory, in the transformation of petunia.