Abstract:
Plant cell and tissue cultures are characterized by the use of isolated parts of plants kept
on, or in a suitable nutrient medium. The nutrient medium functions as replacement for
the cells, tissue, or conductive elements originally neighbouring the explant. The exact
conditions required to initiate and sustain plant cells in culture, or to regenerate intact
plants from cultured cells, are different for each plant species. The empirical approach
has shown that three factors, namely explant, medium composition, and control of the
physical environment are important in successful cultures. When the completely defined
plant culture media do not give the desired results, employing natural substances have
beneficial effects on in vitro plant cell and tissue cultures. Raphunus sativus L. (radish) is
a popular vegetable crop used by people all over the world for its culinary and medicinal
properties. Enhancement of in vitro regeneration of radish variety beeralu is needed to
further tissue culture studied. Therefore the present study was carried out to improve in
vitro shoot regeneration of R. sativus Var. Beeralu by adding natural organic additives.
Hypocotyl explants of aseptic plantlets were cultured on MS basal medium supplemented
with different natural additives; Tj-Coconut water,T2-Coconut milk, T3-Spanich
Leaves , T4-Pumpkin fruit, T5-Banana fruit extract and T6 -Control (without natural additives)
with 2.5mg/l Benzyl Adenine (BAP) and o.img/1 i-Naphthaleneacetic Acid (NAA).
Complete Randomized Design (CRD) with five replicates was used. After one month the
numbers of regenerated shoots were counted and statistical analysis was carried out using
the,Student Newman-Kuells Means Separation Test of SAS program (9.1.3).
The highest mean number of shoots (8 shoots/explant) from R.sativusVar.Beeralu
observed in MS basal medium with 2.5 mg/1 BAP and o.img/1 NAA supplemented with
coconut water (20ml/iooml MS). The lowest number of shoots (0.0 shoot/explant) was
observed from medium with pumpkin juice but it induced callus formation.
