Clonal micropropagation of Indian gooseberry (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.)

Abstract

Indian gooseberry (Emblica officinalis Gaertn.), commonly known as aonla, belongs to the family Euphorbiaceae and is well known for its medicinal and therapeutic properties. Non-availability of genuine planting material and desired number of shoots for grafting or budding is the main limiting factor in the establishment of Indian gooseberry orchard. The use of micropropagation approach for accelerating the production of clonal stock of commercial cultivars in Indian gooseberry has not been a success. Mishra et al. [1] tried to propagate Indian gooseberry through in vitro shoot tip culture. However, micropropagated plants could not be acclimatized due to lack of functional roots. Therefore, we modified our protocol to develop a complete micropropagation system with high frequency shoot proliferation and efficient acclimatization. About 14 year old, bearing tree of Emblica officinalis cv. NA-6 was chosen for the study. The tree was pruned to stimulate new growth. The long shoots were excised, defoliated and trimmed to three centimeter keeping at least one axillary bud from 10-15th nodal segments of shoots as per protocol of Mishra and Pathak [2]. The shoots were first washed under running tap water and then kept in to a solution containing 0.1% Carbendazime (Bavistine) + 60.75 mM Rifampicin with two drops of tween-20 for one hour. The washed shoot buds were further surface sterilized with 0.1% HgCb for 8 minutes aseptically followed by 5-6 washing with sterile distilled water. Sterilized shoots were inoculated on MS medium supplemented with differential level of GA3 (0.0, 1.44, 2.88 and 4.33 mM) and constant regime of Kinetin (13.9 mM) and Glutamine (342.11 mM) to examine the proliferative ability of shoot buds. Twenty-five explants were used in each treatment. The pH of the media was adjusted to 5.75 prior to autoclaving. Two-to-three cm long in vitro raised microshoots were cultured on MS and 1/2 MS basal medium containing IBA (0.0, 39.36 and 49.20 mM) and NAA (0.0, 5.37, 10.74 and 16.11 mM) in various combinations with 0.1% activated charcoal.