Disinfecting technology of Camellia sinensis L inoculants through in vitro culture

Abstract

Leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant is a very economically valuable commodity and can be applied to various fields. Such as in the fields of agriculture, food and beverage and medicine. The problem that is found in the land area is the presence of plants that are more than tens of years old that need to be plant rejuvenated. Rejuvenation with grafting and cutting techniques is strongly influenced by the climate and extensive agricultural land. To overcome this problem, in vitro culture techniques are applied as an effort to conserving/producing plant seeds that are free of disease pests, controlled environments and with narrow land or laboratory scale. This research aimed to determine the inoculant of Camellia sinensis which gave the best results on the disinfecting through in vitro culture technique. The method used in the research was using two types of inoculants, they are shoot buds and young shoots in the disinfecting process, and each process was repeated fifteen times. The results obtained were that the disinfecting of Camellia sinensis plants with shoot bud inoculants showed the lowest level of contamination with the number of growing inoculants close to 85 percent in twelve weeks of inoculant harvesting.