In vitro propagation results of Sorbus aria ’Gran Sasso’

Abstract

Sorbuses are deciduous trees or shrubs belonging to the family Rosaceae, mainly used as ornamental or medicinal, fruit plant. In this work, in vitro sterile culture of Sorbus aria ‘Gran Sasso’ was established on half-strength Murashige and Skoog (MS, 1962) basal medium, and examined its shoot and root productions. The ideal cytokinin concentration and type for in vitro shoot development (with more than five shoot per plant specimen) were 0.4 and 0.8 mg L^-1 BA or BAR, lower dosages or other cytokinins (especially kinetin - KIN) was not effective, however, KIN resulted the longest and widest leaves. After a short (48-hour) period of root stimulation on an induction medium containing 15 mg L^-1 IBA auxin, the hormone-free medium containing 0.75 g L^-1 activated charcoal proved to be the best, but even in this case, it was not possible to achieve a rooting rate better than 36.7%. Silver nitrate was not resulted rooting in every dose, although higher concentrations (2 and 5 mg/l, respectively) decreased average shoot number and effectively increased shoots’ length and leaf sizes.