Establishment of an Open, Sugar-Free Tissue Culture System for Sugarcane Micropropagation

Abstract

Tissue culture has been used for many years to produce a large number of plant species by micropropagation. Unfortunately, microbial contamination and production costs are major problems associated with this technology. We have developed a low-cost, open tissue culture system for rapid sugarcane micropropagation that uses a combination of broad-spectrum antimicrobial compounds, a sugar-free medium, and CO2 gas fertilizer as carbon source. A novel antimicrobial compound called “QX1” that contains nicotine, garlic extract, carbendazim, and “Yipeilong” was developed in this study. Non-autoclaved induction medium containing 0.5% (v/v) QX1 had a significantly lower microbial contamination and a significantly higher explant survival rate in comparision to that of autoclaved induction medium. Sugar-free medium containing 0.5% (v/v) QX1 and 1.0 g/L CO2 gas fertilizer was used for multiplication and rooting under the open tissue culture environment. Propagation efficiencies were similar in the newly developed and conventional tissue culture systems, but contamination was significantly less in the new system during both multiplication and rooting. Also, plantlet survival rate, fresh weight, and net photosynthetic capacity were increased significantly, and production costs decreased dramatically using the new tissue culture system compared with the conventional method. Thus, the low-cost, open, sugar-free tissue culture system can be adapted to produce sugarcane plantlets on a commercial scale.