| dc.description.abstract | Tissue culture of 3 newly released thorny blackberry cultivars, ‘Womack’, 'Rosborough', and 'Brison' was studied for sterilization procedure, shoot and root development, and plantlet acclimatization. Best sterilization procedure was found to be a 10-15 sec dip in 30% ethanol, then rinsed in double distilled water. Under the laminar flow hood, the explants were placed in a 5 min dip in 0.25% sodium hypochlorite plus Tween-20 and rinsed 3 times in double distilled sterile water. For shoot development media, 4 types of explants were cultured in a basic Murashige and Skoog salt mixture plus 0.4 mg/l myo-inositol, 0.1 mg/l GA3, 30 g/l sucrose, 8 g/l agar, 0.1 mg/l BA, and 0.1 mg/l IBA. Stem cuttings had less % contamination and longer shoot length. Shoots developed after 4 days in culture and once reached a size of 1 cm, they were transferred to a rooting media of 0, 1, 3, 6, 10 mg/l IBA. Optimum concentration to induce rooting was 3 mg/l IBA. Immediately after root initiation, plantlets were transferred to a medium with no growth regulators. Plantlets 5 cm in length were transplanted to small plastic pots containing 1 peat: 1 perlite (v/v). Acclimatization procedure followed a weekly exchange of a series of polyethylene covers with 0, 15, 50, and 98 perforations. Following this procedure, 100% of plantlets survived. | en |
