Tissue culture of rubber: past, present and future prospects

Abstract

In rubber, the current propagation method of grafting on to unselected seedlings, maintains intraclonal heterogeneity for vigour and productivity and hence a great improvement may be expected by using micropropagation in vitro. Micropropagation with nodal and shoot tip explants derived from seedlings are possible as with mature clonal explants. The major problem in using clonal material from mature trees of Hevea is the failure to produce an adequate tap root system necessary for tree stability, and the poor response to culture conditions. The latter problem has been over come to a significant level by in vitro micrografting. Recently, there has been an increasing interest in the induction of somatic embryogenesis in Hevea using different explants, media compositions and conditions, especially for use in genetic transformation studies. Successful somatic embryo formation and plant regeneration have been reported by a few researchers in different countries using limited genotypes of Hevea. Attempts to induce somatic embryos from high yielding Sri Lankan clones have not been successful until the late 1990s. The frequency of somatic embryo induction was found to be very low and non-synchronous, its germination remained very difficult and thus Hevea embryogenic system needed further investigation. There is no large scale commercial application of tissue culture techniques for mass propagation of clonal Hevea as yet, either by microcuttings or by somatic embryogenesis. However, there is sufficient progress at research level to suggest that tissue culture of Hevea can and should be further developed.

Daya hidup planlet karet asal in vitro microcutting pada berbagai periode penutupan sungkup plastik dan komposisi media tumbuh Survival rate of in vitro microcutting-derived rubber plantlets on various plastic cover closed periods and medium compositions

“…Arg.) dapat dilakukan dengan microcutting dan embriogenesis somatik (Nayanakantha & Seneviratne, 2007;Montoro et al, 2010). Teknologi in vitro microcutting karet dikembangkan untuk menghasilkan batang bawah klonal (Carron & Enjalric, 1983) guna memenuhi kebutuhan dan meningkatkan kualitas batang bawah yang selama ini dihasilkan dari biji.…”

Perbanyakan Bahan Tanam Karet Juvenil di China

“…Penggunaan somatik embriogenesis (SE) sebagai salah satu teknik perbanyakan tanaman karet telah dilakukan sejak awal tahun 1970 an oleh China (Rubber Cultivation Research Institute) dan Malaysia (Rubber Research Institute of Malaysia). Selanjutnya b e b e r a p a n e g a r a j u g a b e r u p a y a mengembangkan SE pada tanaman karet seperti Perancis pada tahun 1980 dan Srilangka pada tahun 1984 (Nayanakanta, 2007).…”

Genetic and epigenetic uniformity of polyembryony derived multiple seedlings of Hevea brasiliensis

“…Despite this vegetative mode of propagation, large tree to tree variation in growth and yield among bud grafted Hevea trees still exists (Combe 1975;Omokhafe 2004). Though factors like soil heterogeneity and GXE interactions are partly responsible for these variations, it is mainly attributed to the genetically divergent nature of the rootstocks used for propagation (Senanayake and Wijewantha 1968;Nayanakantha and Seneviratne 2007). As established by earlier studies, interaction of scion with the rootstock induces a series of responses widely known as stock-scion interactions leading to changes in the physiology, gene expression, and protein function parameters in plants (Koepke and Dhingra 2013).…”