Application of plant tissue culture technique to micropropagation of the most important almond cultivars in Syria

Abstract

Plant tissue culture has become an important technique in plant production. This research was carried out in the Laboratory of Biotechnology for Medicinal Plants of the National Commission for Biotechnology/Damascus, during the period between 2018-2019,  to study the effect of some growth regulators on multiplication and rooting of four  almond cultivars (Shami Furk,  Dafadii, Ferragnes and Fournat), and determine  which combination of growth regulators lead to the highest rate of multiplication (in terms of number of shoots and length), and the best rooting (in terms of rooting percentage, number of roots and length).  The highest survival and uncontaminated explants percentages were 75%, 62.5% and 62.5% obtained with 0.5% NaOCl for 10 min and 0.1% HgCl₂ for 30 sec in cultivars Dafadii, Shami Furk and Fournat, respectively, while the Ferragnes cultivar showed highest response to surface sterilization when explants were disinfected with 0.1% HgCl₂ for 1 min, with an average of 50% of survival and uncontaminated explants percentage. The results indicated that Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 1.0 mg/l  BA , 0.1 mg/l IBA and 0.2 mg/l GA₃, achieved the highest shoot multiplication with an average of 5.31 and 3.67 shoots per explant and an average of 6.23cm and 4.98cm shoot length in cultivars Shami Furk and Dafadii, respectively, and  MS medium supplemented with 1.0 mg/l  BA and 0.2 mg/l GA₃, achieved the highest shoot multiplication with an average of 3.84 shoots per explant and an average of 4.67 cm shoot length in cultivar Ferragnes, while the cultivar Fournat did not respond to growth in the multiplication  phase. The greatest rooting percentages were 75%, 40% and 35% and the largest average number of roots were 5.17, 3.65 and 3.87  obtained when using IBA auxin at a concentration of 1.0 mg/l  for studied cultivars Shami Furk, Dafadii and Ferragnes,  respectively with an average of 3.03 cm root length. The acclimatization percentages ranged between 50% and 85% in both cultivars Ferragnes and Shami Furk, respectively.