Shoot regeneration and rooting of celastrus porutalatas: a threatened medicinal plant

Abstract

Celastrus paniculatus, belonging to the family Celastraceae, is an important threatened medicinal plant in Sri Lanka. Owing to the increasing demand from the pharmaceutical industry, the species is being overexploited and become a threatening species. Poor seed viability and low germination restricts its propagation through sexual methods. Therefore, alternative approaches such as in vitro techniques are highly desirable for large-scale propagation of this medicinally important plant. Nodal segments, obtained from a shade house grown mature plant, were used as explants for shoot induction. Shoot multiplication was achieved by repeated transfer of explants and sub culturing of invitro produced shoots on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with various concentrations of 6-benzylaminopurine [BAPJ alone or in combination with auxin fNaphthalene acetic acid [NAA) and Thidiazuron [TDZ)). The maximum number of shoots (35.75 I 2.58) was observed on MS medium supplemented with TDZ (0.1 mg L-11 for six months period. In vitro derived shoots were rooted underex virro conditions after treating them with indole-3-butyric acid [300 mg L-1) for 3 min on coco-pel]et. Over 90 0/o of plantlets acclimatized successfully under high humid conditions. The protocol discussed could be effectively employed for large scale multiplication of C. paniculatus.