Buds Reactivity and Factors Promoting Shoots Proliferation and Rooting of Cashew Seedlings Using <i>in Vitro</i> Tissue Culture Process

Abstract

Tissue culture techniques are widely used for the mass propagation of many species. In cashew in vitro propagation, some protocols need to be established at this end. The present work was carried out to evaluate the conditions for in vitro regeneration of cashew seedlings from micropropagation by organogenesis on Benin genotypes. Nodal explants from one-month-old cashew seedlings in the greenhouse and cotyledonary nodes from in vitro germination were used for this purpose. BAP and kinetin were evaluated alone at 2.2 mg/L and then the combination of 2.2 mg/L BAP + 0.2 mg/L IBA was also evaluated. The response of axillary bud proliferation on explants was obtained with both cotyledonary nodes and axillary buds from different combinations of growth regulators. However, the best responses were recorded with cotyledonary nodes. When 2.2 mg/L BAP was used, 80% of the explants responded with numerous proliferation (5 to 8) buds (5.75 ± 0.12) with good shoot length (6.73 ± 0.3 cm) on MS medium containing 150 mL coconut water. Rooting was observed with the combination of NAA (2.5 mg/l) + IBA (2.5 mg/l) on ½ MS containing 40 g/l sucrose.