Somatic embryogenesis from callus cultures of Terminalia chebula Retz.: an important medicinal tree

Abstract

Somatic embryogenesis was obtained from cotyledon and mature zygotic embryo callus cultures of Terminalia chebula Retz. Callus cultures of cotyledon and mature zygotic embryo were initiated on induction medium containing Murashige and Skoog (MS) nutrients with 1.0 mg/l 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) either 0.01 or 0.1 mg/l Kinetin and 30 g/l sucrose. Induction of somatic embryogenesis, proliferation and development was obtained through different culture passages. Embryogenic cotyledon callus with globular somatic embryos was obtained on MS basal medium supplemented with 50 g/l sucrose. Globular somatic embryos were observed from mature zygotic embryo callus on induction medium. Different stages of somatic embryo development from cotyledon and mature zygotic embryo calluses were observed on MS basal medium supplemented with 50 g/l sucrose after 4 weeks of culture. Histological studies have revealed the developmental stages of somatic embryos. A maximum of 40.3±1.45 cotyledonary somatic embryos/callus was obtained from mature zygotic embryo compared to 7.70±0.37 cotyledonary somatic embryos/callus initiated from cotyledons. Germination of somatic embryos and conversion to plants were achieved. Highest frequency of germination (46.66 ±0.88) of somatic embryos was obtained on MS basal medium containing benzyladenine (0.5 mg/l) with 30 g/l sucrose.

Pulvinus: an ideal explant for plant regeneration in Caesalpinia bonduc (L.) Roxb., an important ethnomedicinal woody climber

“…Pulvinus explants failed to respond in hormone free MS medium. 2,4-D alone or in combination with any cytokinins has been widely used for inducing callus in many systems (Manickam et al 2000;Martınez-Palacios et al 2003;Anjaneyulu et al 2004;Shen et al 2007;Shriram et al 2008;Thomas and Shankar 2009). In Azadirachta indica a synergistic action of BA and 2,4-D stimulated profuse callusing which later produced somatic embryos (Rout 2005).…”

In vitro plant regeneration from seedling explants of Stereospermum personatum D.C.: a medicinal tree

“…Complete plantlet regeneration has been reported in some medicinal trees such as Azadirachta indica (Quraishi et al 2004a, b), Acacia catechu (Sahini and Gupta 2002) and Terminalia arjuna (Pandey and Jaiswal 2002). Similarly, reports on micropropagation of Aegle marmelos (Ajithkumar and Seeni 1998), Calophyllum inophyllum (Thengane et al 2006), Gmelina arborea (Naik et al 2003), Terminalia chebula (Anjaneyulu et al 2004), Ocotea bullata and Warburgia salutaris (Kowalski and Van Staden 2001), Buchanania lanzan (Sharma et al 2005), Pterocarpus santalinus (Rajeswari and Paliwal 2006) and Simmondsia chinensis (Bashir et al 2007) are also available.…”

Application of Somatic Embryogenesis to Secondary Metabolite-Producing Plants

“…After 6-8 weeks, somatic embryos developed on the same media composition and their maturation was achieved by increasing sucrose to 50 g/L. A good embryo to plantlet conversion (nearly 50 %) was achieved with 0.5 mg/L BA (Anjaneyulu et al 2004). Interestingly, an Agrobacterium-mediated transformation protocol for this species has been described (Shyamkumar et al 2007), which combined with embryogenic lines, will allow the genetic modification of this important Indian medicinal tree.…”

“…Tree propagation is made by seeds, but low germination rates have been determined. Therefore, biotechnological approaches such as multiple shoot cultures (Shyamkumar et al 2003) and somatic embryogenesis protocols have been developed (Anjaneyulu et al 2004). …”