Stability of variegation in plants propagated by tissue culture of three variegated cultivars of Farfugium japonicum (Asteraceae), a Japanese traditional ornamental plant

Abstract

Stability of the variegation was examined in the plants obtained by tissue culture of three variegated cultivars of Farfugium japonicum, 'Ukigumo-nishiki', 'Temboshi' and 'Kinkan' by culturing shoot tips on plant growth regulator-free 1/2 Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium and rhizome and leaf blade segments on MS medium supplemented with 1 mg l-1 6-benzylaminopurine and 1 mg l -1 α-naphthaleneacetic acid, respectively. In 'Ukigumo-nishiki', shoots regenerated from rhizome and leaf blade segments had only green leaves in the former and either green or albino in the latter, respectively, whereas those developed from the culture of shoot tips exhibited the same variegation as the original plant. In this cultivar, however, shoots propagated secondary by transferring the variegated shoots obtained by shoot tip culture onto 1/2MS medium containing 0.2 mg l-1 6-furfurylaminopurine segregated into either green or albino shoots without maintaining the original variegation phenotype. These results indicate the chimeric nature of variegation in 'Ukigumo-nishiki'. In contrast, shoots derived from all explants of 'Temboshi' and 'Kinkan' exhibited the same variegation as original plants during the multiplication process, indicating no chimeric nature of both cultivars. In these two non-chimeric variegated cultivars, approximately 3.2 times proliferation rate in average was obtained after ca. 40 days of culture on gellan gum-solidified medium containing 0.2 mg l-1 6-furfurylaminopurine. These shoots were successfully rooted on 1/2MS medium containing 0.01 mg l-1 α-naphthaleneacetic acid and established in the soil. ©2010 The Japanese Society for Plant Cell and Molecular Biology.