Vital Parameters Assessments of Starvation Tolerance of in vitro Populus alba Culture

Abstract

Populus alba is a large woody deciduous plant. The plant has been introduced to shooting, then multiplication of rooting on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium. This work was designed to estimate the effect of two factors (low levels of 1-Naphthaleneacetic acid NAA and sucrose) on P. alba response resulting in 6 treatments compared to the control, with twelve measured responses. There was a significant difference in some measurements in morphology, like plantlets fresh-weight, shoot-, root-length, and leaf number. In the physiological measurements, there were significant differences in all the measured parameters. The low concentrations of sucrose and media composition/power (MS grams/L) led to starvation in plants; however, these conditions led to enhancement in some morphological and physiological parameters to overcome the starvation effect, compared to the control. The RAPD-PCR molecular marker (four decamers) was used to evaluate the new individuals’ genetic variation (instability), resulting in a total polymorphism percentage of 50.83%. It was formerly known that the plantlets were identical to each other and to the mother plant. In this study, however, the use of distinct media power, hormonal and sucrose levels resulted in molecular variation reflected in P. alba’s morphological and physiological responses.