TITLE:
In Vitro Regeneration of Endangered Medicinal Hypoxis Species
AUTHORS:
Busie E. B. Nsibande, Xueyuan Li, Annelie Ahlman, Li-Hua Zhu
KEYWORDS:
Corm, Seed, Micropropagation, Plant Growth Regulators
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.6 No.16,
October
21,
2015
ABSTRACT: The genus Hypoxis contains some of southern Africa’s most important wild medicinal species, a
situation that has placed most of them amongst endangered species facing extinction. In this study,
four Hypoxis species collected from Swaziland: H. argentea, H. filiformis, H. acuminata and H. hemerocallidea,
were included to assess their potential for in vitro propagation in order to efficiently
conserve these species in the future. Among all types of explants tested only corm explants and
seeds gave rise to shoots under the in vitro conditions. For the corm establishment, H. filiformis
was the most in vitro responsive species, which had 100% shoot regeneration with high shoot
number when cultured on the MS medium supplemented with 3 mg·l-1 kinetin with a piece of
shoot attached, while the highest mean shoot number (17) was obtained on the same medium, but
with no shoot attachment to the corm explants. H. argentea was the next most responsive species
in vitro with up to 70% establishment, while the other two species had only up to 20% of in vitro
establishment. For the seed explants, up to 29% seed germination was obtained for H. argentea
when the seed coats were crushed before the in vitro culture. The regenerated shoots were rooted
in vitro and acclimatized in the greenhouse successfully