Micropropagation of Lusala(Dioscorea hirtiflora)

Abstract

The research study was carried out in the Tissue Culture Laboratory of the Crop Science Department at the School of Agricultural Sciences of the University of Zambia. The objective of the study was to evaluate micropropagation as a method of propagating Lusala (Dioscorea hirtiflora). The experiment was designed as a split plot with landrace as main plot and media as the subplot. Four landraces, Mongu, Chongwe, Choma and Namwala - were evaluated in five different media namely; (a) Plain MS, (b) MS + 2.5 ppm BAP (BAP ( c ) MS + 1.5 ppm BAP (d) MS + 1.5 ppm BAP + 1.5 ppm NAA (e) MS + 1.5 ppm NAA. The explants used in the study were axillary buds. The experiment was conducted from March 2002 to September 2002, the following parameters were measured: shoot proliferation, regeneration and contamination.The results showed that landraces and media gave different responses to the measured parameters. Namwala had high response at 0.88 shoots per explant, 1.24 shoot proliferation per explant, 0.18 explant responded to rooting and 0.12 explants got contaminated. The least response on landraces was Chongwe at 0.4 shoots per explant, 0.42 shoot proliferation per explant, no rotting and 0.24 explant got contaminated. Media MS + 1.5 ppm BAP + 1.5 ppm NAA and MS + 1.5 ppm NAA had high response at 0.725 shoots per explant, 1.025 shoot proliferation per explant, 0.2 roots per explant and 0.1 explant got contaminated.Hormonefree media had the lowest response at 0.475

shoots per explant, 0.275 shoot proliferation, no rooting and a high contamination rate 0.35 per explant.