Abstract
Bael (Aegle marmelos (L.) Corr.) is a medicinal fruit tree species belongs to the family Rutaceae grown in South Asian countries including India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is an underutilized fruit species in Sri Lanka, although it has food as well as medicinal value with a good economic potential. Popularizing bael as a profitable cash crop is often hindered by the limited availability of high quality planting material. In Sri Lanka, five elite bael accessions namely Beheth Beli, Paragammana, Mawanella, Rambukkana and Polonnaruwa Supun have been identified and used for mass propagation through budding and grafting. But this effort is often hampered by many limitations faced in large scale production. Micropropagation is an alternative technique to produce clonal plants in large scale. However, the complex phenological behaviour of the bael trees could affect its success. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to identify the correct phenological stage of bael trees to collect explants for the micropropagation. Leaves and twig explants were collected for micropropagation from five elite bael accessions during the period of July, 2016 to June, 2017 on monthly basis to capture the best phenological stage. The Beheth Beli tree and grafted plants of other four accessions were established at the Fruit Crop Research and Development Institute, Department of Agriculture, Sri Lanka. The surface sterilized explants were established on Murashige and Skoog medium supplemented with 1 mg/L of 6-Benzylaminopurine, 3% sucrose, solidified with phytogel. A successful organogenesis was only observed in explants collected in the months of April, May and June (39 to 68 %) where there was no significant difference in success was observed between the leaf and twig explants (P>0.05). However, grafted bael accessions exhibited a significantly different mean success percentage in organogenesis where Paragammana and Rambukkana accessions showed a high success for leaf explants and Mawanella and Rambukkana accessions showed a high success for twig explants. These results could be readily employed to multiply the elite bael accessions in Sri Lanka.
Highlights
Aegle marmelos (L.) Corr. of family Rutaceae, commonly known as bael, is a medicinal fruit tree fruit species (Chanda et al, 2008)
The successful organogenesis, measured as the % explants that exhibited shoot development, was not observed for any of the leaf or twig explants collected from Beheth Beli (BB) in the months July, 2016 to March, 2017
The percentage organogenesis of the four grafted elite bael accessions revealed that the successful organogenesis has occurred only in the explants harvested from March to June, 2017
Summary
Aegle marmelos (L.) Corr. of family Rutaceae, commonly known as bael, is a medicinal fruit tree fruit species (Chanda et al, 2008). Bael is native to India and found in South Asian countries such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, South-East Asia and Egypt (Singhal et al, 2011). Ripened fruit is the economically important plant part of bael. All the plant parts have important medicinal properties (Seth, 2003; Benni et al, 2011). Bael is considered as a sacred tree in India and often grown as a sacred tree near the temples dedicated to ‘God Shiva’ (Singhal et al, 2011). The fruits and other plant parts of bael contain important phytochemicals such as tannin, courmarin, aegelinol and marmelocin and they exhibit various medicinal properties ranging from laxative, anti-proliferative, anti-diabetic and anticancerous capabilities (Suvimol and Pranee, 2009; Lambole et al, 2010)
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