Micropropagation of Ornamental Gesneriaceae Species and Genetic Uniformity Assessment of In Vitro Plants Using Scot Markers

A micropropagation protocol via direct shoot organogenesis from leaf explants of four commercial cultivars of ornamental Gesneriaceae was established in this study. The shoot induction was successfully achieved on Murashige and Skoog (MS) media supplemented with 0.2 mg L^-1 indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) and 0.5 mg L^-1 benzylaminopurine (BA). In proliferation stage, the effects of two combinations of PGRs (V1-0.2 mg L^-1 IAA + 0.2 mg L^-1 BA and V2-0.2 mg L^-1 NAA +1 mg L^-1 BA) on shoot number and length were examined for each species. The results suggest that PGR’s combinations significantly influenced shoot proliferation in all analyzed species and among the treatments 0.2 mg L^-1 NAA in combination with 1 mg L^-1 BA was the most effective for in vitro shoot multiplication. The in vitro rooting percentage was 76.86-96.66% and was species-dependent. In vitro-raised plants showed a very high rate of survival (92.59-95.24%). The genetic fidelity between the selected vitro-plants and mother plants were confirmed by SCoT markers and, therefore, the propagation method proposed in this study could be applied for commercial purposes as well.