Abstract
Present study reports successful in vitro clonal propagation of a potential medicinal plant, Cassia alata using mature nodal explants. Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with different concentrations (0.5, 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, 10.0 and 12.5 mu M) of 6-benzyladenine (BA), kinetin and 2-isopentenyl adenine (2-iP) singly as well as in combination with different auxins, alpha-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA), Indole-3-butyric acid (IBA) or Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) (0.1, 0.5 and 1.0 mu M) were used. MS medium enriched with 7.5 mu M BA and 0.5 mu M NAA yielded the highest regeneration frequency (92 %) with maximum multiple shoots (12.3 +/- 0.6) and shoot length (4.7 +/- 0.1 cm) after 12 weeks of culture. Shoots were rooted best on full MS containing 0.5 mu M IBA. Ex vitro rooting of in vitro derived microshoots was also achieved in 150 mu M IBA treatment for 20 min followed by transfer to thermocol cups containing sterile Soilrite (TM). About 85 % plantlets survived acclimatization procedure to the field. The genetic fidelity of in vitro regenerated plants was analyzed using random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) and inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. Of the 20 RAPD primers, 18 primers produced clear, reproducible and scorable bands while out of 13 ISSR primers screened, only ten generated well-defined and scorable bands in all the tested plants. A total of 69 and 71 bands were scored with an average of 3.8 and 7.1 bands per primer for RAPD and ISSR primers respectively. All banding profiles from micropropagated plants were monomorphic and similar to of the mother plant, thus confirming the true-to-type nature of the in vitro-raised clones.