IMPROVED CULTURE MEDIA FOR THE IN VITRO ESTABLISHMENT OF PEAR FROM NODAL CUTTINGS

‘Rocha’ is the most important pear cultivar in Portugal.
A clonal selection program is under way and micropropagation could be used to propagate the most promising clones.
Experiments were carried out aiming at an efficient in vitro establishment from uninodal cuttings.
Explants were prepared from growing shoots taken in two consecutive years from the same three adult ‘Rocha’ trees in the field and from a ‘Williams’ tree.
The effects of ‘Rocha’ mother plant, basal salt medium (QL vs MS) and benzylamino purine (BAP) concentration (0.5, 1.0 or 2.0 mg/L) on explant development were studied.
Mother plant influenced the fresh and dry weights of the shoot(s) evolved from the cuttings.
However, this effect was not consistent among ‘Rocha’ trees from one year to the other, probably due to a different physiological state of a given tree in consecutive years at the time of shoot excision.
In both cultivars, an increase in BAP concentration resulted in a higher number of shoots per explant.
As compared to MS, QL increased the level of explant development as well as the fresh and dry weights of the shoot(s) evolved in at least one year for each cultivar.
These results evinced the superiority of QL salt medium for establishement of pear uninodal cuttings.

VIII International Symposium on Pear

I.C.G. Freire, C.P.S. Coelho, M.T.F. Barros

micropropagation, Pyrus communis, salt media, BAP

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2002.596.75