Abstract

Paederia foetida L. is an important medicinal herb harboring lots of essential drug producing metabolites and the plant has been going to be endangered due to lack of proper strategies for conservation. Since, indirect organogenesis by tissue culture is considered as the valuable tools for rapid multiplication and improvement of plant genetic resources, application of this technique should be very imperative for the conservation of this valuable and rare medicinal plant. Hence, the research effort was made to develop a suitable protocol for indirect organogenesis in-vitro using nodal explants of P. foetida. After surface sterilization, the explants were submitted to MS medium supplemented with different concentrations and combinations of plant growth regulators for showing the performance in terms of callus induction, shoot proliferation and root initiation. Among the surface sterilants used, 0.1% HgCl2 treated for 2 minutes and 3% NaOCl treated for 10 minutes showed better performance and maintained 100% and 80% survivability respectively. MS medium supplemented with 2, 4-D at 1.5 mg L-1 showed better performance than others in terms of initiation of callus from nodal explants. In contrast, NAA at 0.5 mg L-1 and BAP 0.2 mg L-1 showed highest rate of callus proliferation with somatic embryos from proliferated callus. During shoot organogenesis, MS medium supplemented with BAP 2 mg L-1 showed better results for the regeneration of shoots from embryogenic calli. The shoots derived from callus produced roots by half strength MS medium supplemented with IAA. After acclimatization, the plantlets were allowed to ambient condition for further establishment. Our findings claim the establishment of a suitable protocol for indirect organogenesis of P. foetida that could be employed for rapid multiplication, conservation and sustainable utilization of P. foetida as valuable genetic resource.

Key words: Callus, conservation, explants, growth regulators and organogenesis