STRATEGIES FOR IN VITRO CONSERVATION OF DAHLIA (DAHLIA VARIABILIS L.)

Abstract

Dahlia (Dahlia variabilis L.) is an important bulbous flower crop grown in many parts of the world. It has gained popularity owning to beauty, attractive color, various sizes and shapes of flowers. The available diversity with respect to floral characters is worth conserving. The conventional field maintenance is costly, labour oriented and prone to attack by pests and diseases and climate hazards. Storage of bulbs at lower temperature is energy oriented, difficult to maintain and requires more space. Efficient in vitro storage method can help overcome these problems. Hence, an investigation was conducted to standardize the germplasm conservation procedure for in vitro conservation of dahlia. Cultures grown on MS medium with out sucrose (0%) recorded maximum number of days for buds sprouting (21.60), lesser shoot length (4.90 cm) and longest storage period (131.00 days) followed by MS medium + 0.5% sucrose. Maximum number of days taken for bud sprouting (21.50 days), lesser shoot length (4.20 cm) and longest culture storage period (126.00 days) was observed in culture grown quarter strength MS medium, where as, minimum number of days taken for bud sprouting (7.80 days), highest shoot length (10.50 cm) and lowest culture storage period (91.30 days) was observed in full strength MS medium with BAP at 2 mg/L. Highest percent recovery (95.00) was recorded in polypropylene cap as an enclosure while, it was lowest with cotton plug (41.00%) as bottle enclosure.