Discipline: Ecology Environmental and Earth Sciences
Subcategory: Plant Research
Marion Carswell - Fort Valley State University
Co-Author(s): Sarwan Dhir, Center for Biotechnology, Department of Agricultural Science, Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA
Valeriana officinalis is an important medicinal herb commonly found in Kashmir valley. It is a medicinal plant used as a muscle relaxer for anxiety relief, as well as a sleep aid. Due to its variations, poor seed production and germination, and traditional breading effects on cost and time, clonal propagation should be used in order to produce large scale homogeneous plants with high yields of Valerian. This study forms an important preliminary step for in-vitro micro propagation of V. officinalis using a simple one step method for the regeneration of plants/multiple shoots using nodes as explants. We supplemented the MS media with various concentrations of cytokinins- benzyl amino purine (BAP) and kinetin (KN) to study which concentration had the best effect on producing Valerian efficiently and effectively. The results from this protocol indicated that KN or BAP at 2.5 mg/l was the best concentration for shoot induction. Comparing KN 2.5 mg/l with IAA, IBA, or NAA maximum number of shoots were observed with KN 2.5 mg/l + IAA 0.1 mg/l. Rooting was effectively achieved on MS supplemented with IAA at 1.0 mg/l. The subsequent hardening experiment showed that the commercial medium containing a mixture of decomposed coir waste, perlite and organic compost in the ratio of 1:1:1 by volume was most effective, 80% plantlets survived. Regenerated plants were morphologically uniform having normal leaf shape and growth.
References: G.R. Rout, S. Samantaray, P. Das (2000). In vitro manipulation and propagation of medicinal plants. Biotechnology Advances, 18 (2) 91-120; Zebarjadi, A. R., Sh. Najafi, H. R. Ghasempour and J. Motamedi. (2011). Establishment of a practical tissue culture for producing hairy roots of Valeriana officinalis L. via Agrobacterium rhizogenes. Journal of Medicinal Plants Research 5 (20): 4984-4992.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This study was supported, in part, by grants from NSF HRD TIP HBCU-UP #1238789 awarded to Sarwan Dhir, PhD, Director of the Center for Biotechnology, Fort Valley State University, Fort Valley, GA.
Faculty Advisor: Sarwan Dhir, dhirs0@fvsu.edu
Role: Design the experiments, collect the data, and prepare the data for presentation.