Short-Term Storability of Alginate-Encapsulated Persian Violet Microshoots for Germplasm Exchange.

Saowaros Phanomchai,Kitti Bodhipadma,David W M Leung,Sompoch Noichinda

doi:10.3390/plants11020185

Abstract

Microshoots have been widely used for micropropagation. It may be necessary to store microshoots for a short period of time, for example in germplasm exchange needing transport to other research groups. Here, we investigated the short-term storability of alginate-encapsulated Persian violet (Exacum affine Balf. f. ex Regel) microshoots at 4 °C and 25 °C. After storage, the encapsulated microshoots were sown on basal Murashige and Skoog medium for germination and viability determination using tetrazolium chloride staining. The results showed that one or five microshoots encapsulated with a single alginate layer could be stored at 4 °C for up to 30 days, while the percentages of germination and viability of the microshoots encapsulated with two layers of alginate were greatly reduced upon storage. This is the first report on the storability of alginate-encapsulated multiple microshoots, which could be a more efficient way to encapsulate microshoots used for short-term cold storage.

Highlights

Somatic embryos or non-embryonic propagules such as microshoots can be encapsulated using an alginate-based protocol to assist mass micropropagation of plants, the sowing into an ex-vitro growing substrate [1,2,3,4]
In most studies on synthetic seeds, a plant propagule is often enclosed within a single alginate coating [7,8], while variations of this approach, including double coating layers, have been investigated [9,10,11,12]
Persian violet (Exacum affine Balf. f. ex Regel) with its eye-catching purple flowers is popular for decorative purposes in Thailand and is mainly propagated vegetatively because propagation by seeds reduces this plant’s fertility [13]

Summary

Introduction

Somatic embryos or non-embryonic propagules such as microshoots can be encapsulated using an alginate-based protocol to assist mass micropropagation of plants, the sowing into an ex-vitro growing substrate [1,2,3,4]. The encapsulated propagules or commonly called “synthetic seeds,” could possibly be used to facilitate short-term storage required for germplasm exchange or delayed sowing [5,6]. Micropropagation via microshoots encapsulated with a single alginate coating may be an additional tool to assist mass vegetative propagation of Persian violet [4,14] and short-term storage for germplasm exchange. It is, of interest to investigate the effect of alginate coating on the short-term storability of encapsulated Persian violet microshoots at 4 ◦ C and 25 ◦ C for up to 60 days. A double-layer coating was hypothesized to better protect the microshoot during storage than a single-layer one because there would be more alginate hydrogel and a higher water content in the double coating

Methods

Results

Conclusion