Aquilaria malaccensis La m. (Family: Thy melaeaceae), co mmonly known as agarwood, eagle wood or Gaharu is a co mmercially important tree species of northeast India. The Aquilaria tree is categorised as critically endangered in Ind ia. This species is being continuously exploited due to its precious heartwood which is the source of expensive agar oil used in the production of high grade perfu mes as well as in trad itional medicines. The main aim of this study was to establish a speedy callus production protocol fro m Aquilaria malaccensis which may serve as an important option for direct extraction of agar o il. For this purpose, large scale p roduction of callus tissue is needed. An efficient callus regeneration protocol was established through leaf pro liferation in Aquilaria malaccensis Lam. using Murashige and Skoog mediu m supplemented with least amount of plant growth hormones (2,4 D, NAA, Kinetin & BAP) at varied concentrations of sucrose (2-5%). Callus could be initiated in all the treat ments of hormones and sugar levels; however, the best callus growth was obtained in the MS med iu m supplemented with BAP (0.5 mg/ l) + NAA (3mg/l) g iving the h ighest fresh (7.368g) and dry cell b io mass (2.170g) at the optimu m sucrose concentration (4%) after 45-60 days of incubation.

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The genome groups of 34 wild and cultivated banana samples collected from 9 districts of Manipur, India were analyzed using IRAP and RAPD. IRAP-PCR analysis of the banana genome revealed that 32 out of 34 banana samples have shown presence of multiple polymorphic bands in amplified products. There were 5 genome specific bands (2 for B genome and 3 for A genome) in all the samples analyzed by using IRAP marker. Analysis of A and B genome among plant samples using RAPD-PCR generated a total of 1425 polymorphic bands by six primers (OPF-6, OPX-6, OPK-12, RAPD-6, RAPD-14 and RAPD-17). The highest number of bands was generated by OPK12 (318) followed by RAPD6 (308 bands), OPX6 (263 bands), RAPD 17 (215 bands), RAPD 14 (165 bands) and OPF6 (156 bands) respectively. Among these primers, RAPD 14 displayed specific bands per sample thereby showing higher delineating power than other primers.

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