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TISSUE CULTURE OF GERBERA

NAFEES ALTAF, ABDUL REHMAN KHAN, LIAQAT ALI AND INKSAR AHMAD BHATTI

Abstract: Gerbera (Gerbera jamesonii) somatic tissues and seeds were tried for raising tissue cultures. The explants of shoot tips, immature inflorescences, leaf sections, capitulum explants, axillary buds and receptacles explants from field grown plants had contamination problems. Another trouble was slow growth of explant cultures as they were treated with sterilizing chemicals which damage their growing regions. However, callusing was in all explants and shoot regenerations were obtained from shoot tip and axillary buds. The calluses were obtained from clean seeds which were pre-soaked (20mg/liter for six hours) in colchicine for induction of polyploidy. The germinating seedlings were crushed and tissue mass was put on callusing medium containing MS with BA+2,4-D (each 3 mg/liter). After six weeks, the calli were transferred to MS+BA (4mg/liter) +IBA (1mg/liter). The developed plantlets were separated and cultured on MS containing BA and IBA (each @ 0.5mg/liter). The plantlets were transferred to pots under 100% humidity during initial weaning period, acclimatized and grown as normal plants.

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