(174) In Vitro Regeneration of Cornus kousa

Abstract

Axillary and apical buds from five Cornus kousa cultivars (`Little Beauty', `Samaritan', `Heart Throb', `Rosabella', and `Christian Prince') were initially established on two basal media, woody plant medium (WPM) and woody plant medium/broad leaved tree medium (BW), amended with the following concentrations of 6–benzylaminopurine (BA): 0, 2, 4, and 8 μm. After explants were transferred at 4-week intervals for 28 weeks beginning in April, only microshoots of `Samaritan', `HeartThrob' and `Rosabella', were harvested from proliferating cultures and placed on rooting media. `Little Beauty' and `Christian Prince' did not perform well in multiplication phase of tissue culture and were excluded from further studies. Rooting media contained WPM or BW supplemented with either 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA), indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) or indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) at the following concentrations: 0, 0.5, 1.5, 4.5, and 13.5 μm. Six weeks following rooting experiment, preliminary data were collected and results showed that total of nine plants rooted on both WPM and BW media supplemented with IBA, 17 plants rooted on media supplemented with NAA, and 14 plants rooted on media supplemented with IAA. These results indicated that NAA and IAA appeared to be better for root production on C. kousa cultivar microshoots than IBA. Additionally, WPM supported more root production, when compared to BW, even though both media resulted in rooted microshoots. Proliferating masses were placed on fresh medium with 2μm BA and were used again for the rooting projects.