AbstractSugars are critical components in bread wheat (Triticum aestivumL.) anther culture media for successful somatic embryo initiation and plant regeneration. In this experiment, anthers from three wheat genotypes were cultured on a modified Liang's 85D12 initiation medium with seven sugar combinations (I‐sugars: galactose, mannose, maltose, fructose, sucrose, glucose, maltose + glucose) at 0.26M, and 2,4‐dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2 mg/L), 1‐naphthalene acetic acid (1 mg/L), and glutamine (254 mg/L). Wheat starch (5 % W/V), a potential source of sugars, was used as the medium gelling agent. No previous research has studied the effect of different sugars with wheat starch. A split‐plot experimental design with 42 replications was used with genotypes as whole plots and sugar combinations as subplots. Galactose and mannose did not support embryoid initiation and were dropped from the analysis. Averaged over the three genotypes, maltose was the best sugar (105 embryoids/100 anthers), followed by glucose (47 embryoids/100 anthers) and maltose + glucose (37 embryoids/100 anthers). These three sugar combinations were superior to the standard medium sugar, sucrose (24 embryoids/100 anthers), and to fructose (12 embryoids/100 anthers). The embryoids were divided into two groups for plant regeneration. The first group was transferred to regeneration medium (Liang 85D12 salts, sugars at 0.06M, and wheat starch at 7 % w/v as gelling agent) with the same sugar (R‐sugar) used as in initiation. The second group was transferred to regeneration media with sucrose. I+R‐ma