Enhancing Regeneration in White Yam (Dioscorea rotundata) Through Friable Embryogenic Callus

White yam (Dioscorea rotundata) is a critical staple food and an income generating crop in tropical regions. However, its improvement via classical breeding is challenging and time consuming due to an erratic flowering pattern, poor seed set, dioecious nature, low pollen fertility and low seed germination rates. These constraints limit the genetic gains achievable in each generation and prolong the breeding cycle to approximately 10 years, underscoring the need to implement faster biotechnological approaches. This study presents an optimized protocol for producing FECs (friable embryogenic callus) in yam, which serves as an ideal tissue type for transgene delivery and accelerated breeding by site specific nucleases. The various factors influencing FEC induction were optimised, including basal salt composition, tissue wounding, washing treatments, and medium supplementation with antioxidants. The results demonstrated that reduction in nitrogen supplements, along with 10 mg/L thiamine, 1000 mg/L proline and 600 mg/L casein hydrolysate, and enhanced callus fresh weight by up to 498.4 mg per explant and increased the embryogenic competence to 76.2%. Callus wounding by crushing through mesh further improved FEC induction and washing the crushed callus with 10 mg/L ascorbic acid reduced browning and necrosis, reducing recovery time from 25 to 13 days. The optimized FEC induction medium (FIM) induced somatic embryoes in over 77% of cultures. This protocol provides a robust platform for yam genetic improvement, offering an excellent starting material for protoplast isolation, regeneration and genome editing to enhance crop resilience and productivity.