Agricultura – Ştiinţă şi practică nr. 1-2 (69-70]/2009 -47- EFFECT OF AUXINE AND CYTOKININE ON CALLUS INDUCTION IN POTATO (SOLANUM TUBEROSUM L.) EXPLANTS Nistor Andreea * , Gh. Câmpeanu ** , Nicoleta Chiru * , Diana Karácsonyi * * Department of Vegetal Tissue Culture, National Institute of Research and Development for Potato and Sugar Beet Brasov, Romania; tican_andreea@yahoo.com ** University of Agronomical Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Bucharest, Romania Abstract: Effect of growth regulators for callus induction of potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) genotypes (Christian and Roclas) was studied. The best callus induction was for MS medium supplemented with 1mg/L 2,4 D and 0,5 mg/l BAP for both the genotypes. Keywords: somaclonal variations, callus, induction, medium, 2,4-D, BAP INTRODUCTION Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is one of the most economically important annual vegetable crop of Solanaceae family. Cultivated potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is one of the most important vegetable crops in the world (Solmon-Blackburn and Baker, 2001). Plant regeneration became a useful technique and is applied to solve the problems of many agriculturas crops. Creation of novel germplasm through techniques of tissue culture and gene transfer holds great potential for improving the quality, resistance to diseases and agronomic characters of potato (Jayaree et al., 2001). Plant biotechnology has approached an efficient and rapid way for creating new varieties and their reproduction (Dai et al., 2000). For many cultures, biotechnology is a major tool in breeding. The term „somaclonal variation” is used with reference to the observed variation at regenerated plants from the tissue and culture cells. It is known that the somaclonal variations can take place at isolated protoplasts, calli. Many authors (Choi et al., 1997; Patnaik et al., 1997; Redway et al., 1990) reported on regeneration of plants from embryogenic suspension culture. The cause of somaclonal variation is assigned to the number modifications and the chromosomes structure. The cytological heterogeneity of the cultures is on principle the result of the next factors: 1. The mosaics chromosomal expression or genetic disorder of the initial explants cells; 2. Irregularity due to the medium conditions. On tissue culture, this type of modifications, were in general removed, because the main objective was the genetic stability of cultures increase. The researchers have shown that brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk