Establishment of a high-frequency plant regeneration system from rhizome-derived embryogenic cell-suspension cultures of Curcuma longa L.

Abstract

We developed an efficient plant regeneration technique for turmeric (Curcuma longa L.) via somatic embryogenesis derived from embryogenic cell suspensions cultured from petioles. We initiated in vitro callus cultures from the plantlets of turmeric cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium. Then leaf, petiole, stem, and root explants of in vitro-grown plantlets were cultured on Schenk and Hildebrandt (SH). The stem and root explants formed white nodular calluses at a frequency of 86.7% and 85.8%, respectively, when cultured on SH medium; however, we used the calluses derived from the root explants for initiating a cell-suspension culture. In this study, the actively growing cell suspension culture comprised small, highly cytoplasmic cell aggregates and large vacuolated cells. On being transferred to a basal SH medium (without growth regulators), a few of these calluses differentiated into somatic embryos, which indicated that the initial calluses were embryogenic cells. We stimulated additional shoot differentiation by adding 0.5 mg L−1N-phenyl-N′-1,2,3-thiadiazol-5-yl urea (TDZ) and various concentrations of N6-benzyladenine (BA) to the embryogenic cell suspension. The highest frequency at which shoot primordia developed from embryogenic cell clusters was 70% (when cultured in the dark on the supplemented MS medium), with more than 83.3% of regenerated shoot primordia producing roots. We successfully transplanted rooted plantlets into a soil mixture of sterile vermiculite and potting soil (1:1) and grew them to maturity in a growth chamber, achieving a survival rate of > 95%. To our knowledge, this is the first report of complete plant regeneration of turmeric from embryogenic cell-suspension cultures. The embryogenic cell line and plant regeneration system established in this study can be applied to mass proliferation and gene manipulation for improving turmeric quality.