Production of plantlets from tissue cultures of Lotononis, a southern African veld legume.

Abstract

A simple procedure is described for the production of large numbers of rooted plantlets from callus cultures of Lotononis bainesii Baker. Highest frequency of shoots was obtained from somatic embryos formed in initiation cultures on Murashige & Shoog medium plus 1 mg/l benzylaminopurine plus 1 mg/l naphtaleneacetic acid. The somatic embryos from these initiation cultures were transferred to media containing 0, 5, 10 or 20 mg/l isopentenyladenine or 0, 1 of 5, 0 mg/l kinetin (1, 8 to 3, 1 shoots per culture) where they re-callused and produced shoots. All shoots obtained from the cultures on media containing 0, 5, 10 or 20 mg/l isopentenyladenine or 0, 1 mg/l kinetin were rooted; 35% of shoots from the cultures on medium containing 5, 0 mg/l kinetin were rooted. Rooting of unrooted shoots from other treatments was readily induced on medium containing 0, 1 mg/l indoleacetic acid.

Keywords: callus cultures; forage legume improvement; legumes; lotononis bainesii; plantlets; procedure; rooting; somatic embryos; tissue culture