Abstract
Many plants of commercial interest are propagated in tissue culture, with some presenting difficulties in their mineral balance. Historically, this issue has been addressed by varying the mineral composition of the media hoping to find a satisfactory combination. However, a potentially more efficient approach has been successful for several species, i.e., amendment of the media composition based on the mineral content of the plantlet leaves relative to that of the young leaves of thriving, field-grown plants. We used the latter approach to address a mineral imbalance encountered in propagating the Australian native plant, spotted iron gum (Corymbia maculata (syn. Eucalyptus maculata)). The chemical analysis showed that the concentration of iron in the plantlets was far in excess of requirement, and the plantlets thrived when its concentration in the medium was decreased 10-fold. This success supports the proposition that the mineral analysis of plantlets, together with the published data on foliar sufficiency ranges, may provide an efficient, general approach to optimizing the mineral composition of media for the in vitro production of plants.
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