EVALUATION OF THREE in vitro CULTURE SYSTEMS FOR THE MULTIPLICATION OF GLADIOLUS MICROCORMS

Abstract

In the ornamental industry, gladiolus (Gladiolus spp) is one of the main cut flowers worldwide. The propagation is through corms, with low multiplication rates, which makes it necessary to use in vitro techniques to obtain vegetative material with identical, uniform and disease-free physiological characteristics. However, the research about in vitro multiplication of gladiolus is scarce. The temporary immersion system (RITA) was used successfully to produce gladiolus microcorms in vitro. To date, the temporary immersion bioreactor system (BIT) has not been used for production of in vitro gladiolus microcorms, which represents only 25 % of the cost of a RITA system. The objective was to evaluate three in vitro culture systems: semi-solid medium, liquid medium in partial immersion and liquid medium in temporary immersion bioreactors (BIT), for the multiplication of gladiolus microcorms of the variety “Ámsterdam”. In the BIT system there was an increase of 91 % in microcorms multiplication compared to the semisolid system and 100 % in relation to the partial immersion system. The number of shoots was also higher (41.3) in the BIT system than in the semi solid culture system and in the liquid culture system with partial immersion (5.8 and 6.5 shoots per explant). These results allowed the use of temporary immersion bioreactors to be established as the best system for the massive multiplication of gladiolus microcorms.