Study on the Low-Cost Methods for Tissue Culture Applications in Orchid

Abstract

Abstract - Orchid is one of the most important cut flowers, grown in Sri Lanka. Quality raw material supply is a key success for orchid cultivation and scarcity leads to major concern in sustainable growth of the industry in a long run. Mass cultivation by micro propagation techniques can be successfully used to mass propagation of orchids; thus, cost benefit is less due to the high cost. Aim of this research was to replacement of expensive agar with low-cost substance for in vitro sub culturing of Cattalya seedlings. Two-month-old Cattleya seedlings were subcultures on Murashige and Skoog media (MS) as basal media. As gelling agents’ sago, semolina, corn flour, semolina + agar, corn flour + agar was used. Used agar as the control treatment. Cultures were maintained inside the culture room. Number of leaves, Number of roots, Leaf length, leaf width and percentage of contaminations were recorded at four-week intervals. Sago and semolina + agar showed higher performance and low contamination percentage as alternative gelling agent in the MS media. The results of this study propose that sago, semolina, and corn flour can be used as an alternative gelling agent in MS media. This low-cost method might be uplift the orchid culture in Sri Lanka.