Abstract:
In vitro cultivation of plant tissues is generally carried out in a solid or semi-solid nutrient
medium, using gelling agents. Agar is a polysaccharide extracted from sea weeds is used
commonly in plant tissue culture to solidify the medium. Unreasonable price of agar and fear
of over-exploitation of its resources necessitated the search for low costs materials as
alternative to agar. Radish {Raphanus sativus L., Brassicaceae) is an important vegetable
plant with varied medicinal properties. Therefore, the present study was designed to examine
the potential of alternative cheap gelling agents {corn flour, kithul flour, barley, saw, wheat
flour and undu flour) for seed germination of radish {Raphanus sativus L.) var. Beeralu
Rabu. Seed germination was observed on MS basal medium supplemented with different
alternative gelling agents (10%) and agar (0.8%). Plantlets weights, heights and number of
germinated seeds were recorded after 4 weeks of culture. Results showed that agar and
alternative gelling agents successfully produced plantlets from the seed explants of radish
after 4 weeks. The highest mean height (16.89cm) of plantlets was obtained in MS basal
medium with agar and highest mean weight (1.65g) of plantlets were obtained from MS
medium supplemented with corn flour. Furthermore highest number of seeds (3.4) out of 5
seeds was germinated in the medium with corn flour. Mean height, weight and number of
seeds germinated in MS media with corn flour were not significantly different from agar.
Cost of gelling agent was reduced in 95% by using corn flour as solidification agent instead of
agar. Corn flour (10% w/v) has shown a greater potential as a cheaper alternative gelling
agent for agar based medium as per the cost analysis.
