Plant Cell, Tissue and Organ Culture 52: 189–192, 1998. © 1998 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 189 Research note In vitro shoot propagation of Dendrocalamus strictus nees R. Ravikumar, G. Ananthakrishnan, K. Kathiravan & A. Ganapathi ∗ Department of Biotechnology, School of Life Sciences, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli-620 024, Tamil Nadu, India Received 27 June 1997; accepted in revised form 14 January 1998 Key words: bamboo, axillary bud, multiple shoots, seedling, mature plant Abstract Multiple shoots were induced from seedling and axillary buds of mature plants of Dendrocalamus strictus on Murashige and Shoog’s medium supplemented with BA and kinetin. About 35–45 shoots were obtained within 20–25 days from a nodal explant of seedling and 3–8 shoots were obtained from a nodal explant of mature plants in the primary culture. The seedling derived cultures were separated into groups of 5–7 and transferred to fresh subculture medium. Rooting of the shoots was achieved under in vitro and ex vitro conditions. 85–90% of rooting was achieved by the ex vitro method using IBA. Abbreviations: BA – 6-benzylaminopurine; IBA – indole-3-butyric acid; MS – Murashige and Skoog’s Bamboos are giant grasses restricted to Asian tropics and mostly used by the rural people for food, housing and other domestic purposes. The bamboo seeds are viable only for a short period. Propagation through seed is difficult due to unreliable flowering habit at an interval of 30–100 years and quick loss of viability. The conventional vegetative propagation practiced as an alternative method has proved to be only of limited value. The improvements in the bamboo tissue culture techniques during the last decade offer an attractive alternative for large scale propagation (Mehta et al., 1982; Nadgir et al., 1984; Banik, 1987; Saxena, 1990; Chang, 1991). The present study was undertaken to es- tablish a protocol for efficient regeneration of plantlets from seedling as well as mature plant explants of one of the economically important bamboos - D. strictus. Seeds of D. strictus were procured from Kerala Forest Research Institute (KFRI), Peechi, Kerala, In- dia. They were surface sterilized by standard methods (Mascarenhas et al., 1975) and germinated on White’s basal medium (White, 1963) containing 2% (w/v) su- crose. The pH of the medium was adjusted to 5.8 prior to autoclaving for 20 min at 120 ◦ C. The cultures were maintained in 16-h photoperiod of (40 μmol m −2 s −2 ) at 25±2 ◦ C. The efficiency of shoot multiplication was tested by culturing the nodal segments from the lateral branches of fresh twigs which were collected from 10 year old trees of D. strictus. These were steril- ized by standard methods and cultured on White’s medium. Well developed shoots (2.0 to 4.0 cm) from both seedling (25 days old) and mature explants were excised and placed in MS liquid medium containing (0.25 to 2.0 mg l −1 ) of BA and coconut water (200 ml l −1 ) with or without kinetin (0.5 to 1.0 mg l −1 ) for multiplication. Subcultures were performed at inter- vals of 14 days by the separation of shoots, in groups of five to seven and transferred to fresh liquid medium. Propagules of both shoot types were cultured in liquid MS (Murashige and Skoog’s, 1962) media con- taining 2% (w/v) sucrose with IBA (0.25 to 2.0 mg l −1 ) for root induction. For ex vitro rooting, the shoots were washed in 0.2% bavistin (Carbendazim) solution for 5 min and dipped in various concentrations of IBA and kept in polythene bags containing sterilized soil and vermiculite (1:1). Humidity was maintained at 85 to 95%. Initial germinability of the seeds was about 73%, on the White’s basal medium, and after 15–20 days,