Genotypic effects on accelerated propagation of oil palm breeding materials selected (Elaeis guineensis jacq.) using somatic embryogenesis

Abstract

Vegetable oil production from oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is an important industry due to the rising demand every year. The somatic embryogenesis culture can propagate oil palm duplicate as parent plant, which can be selected as breeding material to produce new planting germplasm with high production or disease resistance. This study aims to evaluate the genotypic effect of somatic embryogenesis, while immature leaflets were employed as explants. The culture used embryo induction medium based on Murashige and Skoog (MS) modifications that contained 5 ​mg/L Naphthalene Acetic acid (NAA) and 0.5 ​mg/L Benzyl Amino Purine (BAP). The genotypic effect was statistically significant in the percentage of callus induction, producing somatic embryos, and germination embryos. In this study, we successfully cloned thirteen oil palm genotypes (GE-02, GE-03, GE-06, GE-07, GE-09, GE-23, GE-24, GE-27, GE-28, GE-32, GE-33, GE-34, and GE-35), with the highest number of somatic embryos formed on GE-27 with a percentage of 70.1%. The cloning was successful in accelerating the propagation of oil palm for materials breeding programs to create new varieties with high production and disease resistance. It is necessary to observation the performance of these clones in the field in terms of mantle flower appearance.