Initiation of horticultural crop explants in vitro

The stage of introduction into sterile culture plays an important role in clonal micropropagation. The purpose of these studies was to find the optimal sterilizing agent at the stage of introducing blue honeysuckle, red raspberry, garden strawberry, steppe cherry, house plum into in vitro culture, as well as the optimal nutrient medium at this stage for blue honeysuckle and red raspberry. As sterilizing agents with optimal exposure, the following were used: 48% ethyl alcohol (control) 8–10 min., 33% perhydrol 6–8 min., 6% chlorhexidine 8–10 min., 0.1% sublimate 1–2 min., 10.0% Domestos 6–7 min., Amway pursue 10–12 min. Murashige-Skooga modified (NH4 content reduced at 15%) and Woody Plant Medium nutrient media were used to identify the optimal media for blue honeysuckle, and Anderson and Quorin-Leporrier media – for raspberries. All nutrient media had a half dose of macro- and microsalts. The control medium was traditional Murashige-Skooga. The results of the experiment showed that 33.0% perhydrol is the most effective sterilizing agent for processing the initial plant material of all horticultural crops when initiating explants in vitro, since it provided a significantly high yield of sterile apexes of 63.0% on average. A significantly high result was also obtained when using 6% chlorhexidine – 51.9% with 39.1% in control (48% ethyl alcohol). Treatment of plant material with 33.0% perhydrol ensured the absence of vitrified (glassy) explants in all studied cultures, as well as chlorotic explants in cherries and plums. Significantly better results of the survival rate of blue honeysuckle apexes were obtained on the nutrient medium Woody Plant Medium – 76.7%. Cultivation of raspberry apexes on the Kvorin-Leporie nutrient medium significantly increased their survival rate to 56.7% of red raspberry and 36.7% of remontant raspberry.