POME: An Alternative Nutrient Source for Bio-Organic Plant Tissue Culture Media

Abstract

One of the methods in sustainable agriculture is transforming crop wastes into beneficial products such as bio-fertilizer, which will improve the soil fertility, preserving the natural sources, and cost-effective practices. Currently, these practices also need to be applied in plant tissue culture technology to enhance an eco-friendly and sustainable resources which are abundant and locally available. To date, the new bio-organic media derived from different types of agricultural wastes, especially from fruit wastes were successfully established. The objective of this study was to determine the efficiency of agricultural waste, i.e. Palm Oil Mill Effluent (POME) through a natural fermentation process as a potential nutrient source to substitute the existing standard and synthetic plant tissue culture media (PTC) such as Murashige and Skoog's (1962) (MS) Medium, Woody Plant Medium (WPM), N6 (Chu) Medium and Gamborg's (B-5) Medium, available in the market. 100 mL (v/v) POME solution was added with 100 mL (v/v) molasses and then were fermented naturally for 4 weeks in dark condition at room temperature. The results showed that the nutritional value of the fermented POME solution was higher than the synthetic MS basal salt medium. The new POME PTC medium was successfully formulated as a new bio-plant tissue culture media for in vitro regeneration of Musa acuminata.