Histological Procedures Carried out During Coconut Somatic Embryogenesis

Histological methods allow to characterize the developmental changes that occur in plant tissues during in vitro culturing of explants. Different procedures to assess these changes have been reported in the literature. Here we describe a simple histological procedure to evaluate the development of explants using the fixation with paraformaldehyde, embedding with methacrylate resin and staining with periodic acid Schiff's reagent and naphthol blue black. This method allows to obtain high contrast in the stained cells, for a better characterization of cellular events that occur during coconut somatic embryogenesis.