Enzymatic treatment of somatic embryo explants to increase the efficiency of Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformations of Theobroma cacao

Theobroma cacao (cacao) is an economically significant tropical crop facing diverse challenges and whose breeding is limited by time- and resource-intensive processes. While genetic transformations hasten target gene evaluation, cacao currently has low transformation efficiency. I attempted to improve cacao transformations by using cellulase and pectinase treatments. We found a cellulase treatment of 20 mg/mL increased GFP expression in callus. With this data, we hope to use these treatments to develop transgenic embryos.