TITLE:
Generation of Virus Free Potato Plantlets through Meristem Culture and Their Field Evaluation
AUTHORS:
Md. Abul Kalam Azad, Zubaida Khatun, Touria El-Jaoual Eaton, Md. Isrfil Hossen, Md. Kamrul Haque, Edward Binod Soren
KEYWORDS:
Meristem Culture, Micropropagation, Potato Cultivars, Plantlets, Plant Growth Regulators
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.11 No.11,
November
30,
2020
ABSTRACT: Different aspects of micropropagation through meristem
culture for the production of virus indexed source plants, in vitro tuberization and field evaluation of the in vitro regenerated plants were studied
on four commercial cultivars of potato (Solanum
tuberosum L.) viz., Diamant, Cardinal, Shilbilati and Lalpakri. The
investigation was conducted at Rajshahi, Bangladesh from December 2010 to March
2012 to produce virus-free potato plantlets through meristem culture, shoot
multiplications with root induction as well as their acclimatization and
evaluation of morphological characters and tuber yield under field condition.
Shoot tips of 25 - 30 day old field-grown plants of above
mentioned four cultivars were used for meristem isolation. After isolation,
meristems of these varieties of potato were cultured on “M” shaped filter paper
bridge in Murashige and Skoog (MS) liquid medium. Four different treatments of
media formulations viz. 0.1 mg/L KIN + 0.1 mg/L GA3, 0.1 mg/L
KIN + 0.5 mg/L GA3, 0.5 mg/L KIN + 0.1 mg/L GA3 and 0.5
mg/L KIN + 0.5 mg/L GA3 were used as plant
growth regulators. From these formulations MS + 0.1 mg/L KIN + 0.5 mg/L GA3 was found to be the best for the primary establishment of meristem culture. The primarily established meristems
were subcultured on to MS semisolid basal medium supplemented with four
different treatment combinations of hormones viz. 0.5 mg/L BA + 1.0 mg/L IBA; 0.1 mg/L
KIN + 0.1 mg/L GA3; 0.5 mg/L BA + 0.5 mg/L GA3 and 0.5
mg/L KIN + 0.5 mg/L GA3 were used to identify the suitable media
compositions for shoot proliferation. Results showed that out of these four
media treatments the formulation 0.5 mg/L BA + 0.5 mg/L GA3 was
found to be the best suitable for shoot generation. Among the four cultivars of
potato higher frequency of shoot proliferation (number of shoots/explant and
longest shoot length) was observed in Diamant, though the highest shoot
formation (76%) was recorded in Cardinal. Virus free in vitro grown potato plantlets were obtained through DAS-ELISA test and used substantially for micro-propagation.
After gradual acclimatization of rooted plantlets of four potato cultivars, they were transferred
into the field for cultivation and established successfully. It was observed
from the field study of in vitro meristem-derived plantlets that there were no virus-affected plants. The
virus-free exotic varieties were much superior in all vegetative attributes and
yield compared to
those of indigenous varieties with producing potato plants of normal height. In
contrast, the indigenous varieties took a longer time to tuber initiation and maturity, lower
plant height and number of leaves per plant, a higher number of tubers but a lower amount of tuber weight per plant, and poorer
tuber grade than the exotic varieties. However, the variety Cardinal exposed
the best performances in the context of survival percentage of plantlets (90%),
days to tuber initiation (DTI), a number of leaves per plant (NL), tuber weight per
plant (343.40%) and the percentage of rich tuber grade.