Abstract
Six cultivars of apple and two of red raspberry consistently produced equal or significantly better shoot proliferation on modified Murashige and Skoog medium gelled with a mixture of corn starch and Gelrite than on the same medium gelled with agar. Two pear cultivars grown on starch-Gelrite medium produced hyperhydric shoots and almost no growth, but the addition of a polysaccharide hydric control (‘antivitrifying’) agent to the medium eliminated hyperhydricity. The resulting shoot proliferation equaled or exceeded that on the agar-gelled medium. The starch-Gelrite mixture is easy to prepare and gelling agent costs are only 10–15% of agar, or less if starch is purchased in bulk. Although the opaque gray-white medium makes it more difficult to detect internal contaminants, external contaminants are easily discerned.
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Zimmerman, R.H., Bhardwaj, S.V. & Fordham, I.M. Use of starch-gelled medium for tissue culture of some fruit crops. Plant Cell Tiss Organ Cult 43, 207–213 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00039946
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00039946