Development of an efficient micropropagation procedure for Aglaonema 'Lady Valentine' through adventitious shoot induction and proliferation

Abstract

An efficient micropropagation procedure via adventitious shoot proliferation was developed for Aglaonema using the popular red cultivar 'Lady Valentine.' Aseptic culture was initiated by culturing stem nodal segments on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 32 mg·l-1 gentamicin, 8 mg·l-1 tetracycline and 4 mg·l-1 chloramphenicol. The growth of the axillary buds performed the best when 10 mg·l-1 6-benzyladenine (BA) was incorporated into the medium, and neither gibberellic acid (GA3) nor dark exposure could improve the elongation of the axillary shoots. The single stem nodal segments excised from the elongated shoots were treated with different combinations of α-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and thidiazuron (TDZ) and an average of 10.9 adventitious shoots per stem segment was produced with 0.5 mg·l-1 NAA and 2 mg·l-1 TDZ. Small shoot clusters were subsequently incubated with different concentrations of BA and GA3 and results showed that 0.5-5 mg·l-1 BA treatments were more effective for shoot proliferation and elongation than 0.5-1 mg·l-1 GA3 treatments. The longest shoots (reaching 2.69 cm after three months) were obtained on medium containing 5 mg·l-1 BA. Up to 80% of the elongated shoots successfully rooted ex vitro with the application of 1 and 2 mg·l-1 indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) and 92.5% of these rooted shoots survived following transfer to the greenhouse. © 2013 The Japanese Society for Plant Cell and Molecular Biology.