Abstract
Unavailability of clean planting material is a major constraint of potato production in Eritrea. In vitro multiplication is proved to be a reliable solution; however, due to high media cost and initial investment, its use has been limited. The current study was carried out to evaluate the effectiveness of three starches (corn, potato and barley) of both laboratory and commercial grades as agar substitute, for micropropagation of potato. Single nodes of potato were sub-cultured into a fresh modified Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with sucrose (3% w/v) and gelled with 50 g/l of six types of starches in addition to 7 g/l of agar as a control. Gelling agents used showed a highly significant difference in all measured parameters. The pH of all starch based media increased by 0.23-1.3 units during the culture time except the control media which decreased by 0.4 units. Similarly EC showed a decreasing trend in all gelling agents. In most of the measured physical parameters such as plant height, root length, fresh weight and dry weight three starch based media namely laboratory grade potato, commercial corn and laboratory corn showed better results compared to the control media. Survival of in vitro plantlets ranged between 85 and 90% after acclimatization. Both laboratory and commercial grade starch based media resulted in cost reduction of 15-22% and 61-66%, respectively. This implies that using both corn and potato starches can be reliable and cost effective gelling agents for micropropagation of potato.
Highlights
Potato is the most important root and tuber crop in the world and is used as stable food in households, in food processing industries, alcohol production and as animal feed (Danci et al, 2012)
The media state is an important aspect of a gelling agent in supporting a plantlet from sinking, while gel clarity is vital in detecting microbial contamination
The variation in pH and Electrical Conductivity (EC) could be mainly due to ionic composition of the different gelling agents
Summary
Potato is the most important root and tuber crop in the world and is used as stable food in households, in food processing industries, alcohol production and as animal feed (Danci et al, 2012). Farmers use unimproved seed tuber saved from the previous season or purchased from non-reliable sources (Biniam et al, 2014a) This type of seed potato production system is characterized by low rates of multiplication and carry high risk of disease infection (Tadesse, 2000). One of the factors contributing to the high cost of production is the cost of culture nutrient media which requires several chemicals that are often very expensive Gelling agents such as agar constitute about 70% of the total cost (Purohit et al, 2011). A quest for an alternative to agar as gelling agent will result in significant reduction of cost of tissue culture propagated seed potato material. The current study was, designed to assess the effectiveness of some starches (potato, barley and corn of commercial and laboratory grades) as substitute gelling agents for agar in the micro-propagation of potato
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