TITLE:
Precocious In-Vitro Flowering of Perennial Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis L.) Regenerants with a Chemical Inducer
AUTHORS:
Fuminori Komai, Yasuki Watanabe, Akira Kanno, Kiyoshi Masuda
KEYWORDS:
Asparagus, Carbamate, Encapsulation, Precocious Flowering, Somatic Embryo
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Plant Sciences,
Vol.7 No.14,
September
29,
2016
ABSTRACT: A precocious flowering system of regenerants in
asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) was achieved by treatment with a chemical
inducer. Somatic embryos withered completely by being processed for 8 - 12 days with 200 μM n-propylN-(3,4-dichloro-phenyl)carbamate that
had been dissolved in distilled water. In contrast, precocious flowering
occurred at an extremely low rate (3.4%) when somatic embryos were processed in
carbamate dissolved in Murashige and Skoog’s liquid medium. To encapsulate the
female and male embryos, we surveyed the optimum conditions of viscosity and concentration
of sodium alginate for encapsulating the seeds, and we screened the values of
80 - 120 cps and 2% - 3%, respectively. The synthetic seeds produced also withered when they
were processed with the carbamate dissolved in distilled water. However, when
Murashige and Skoog’s liquid medium was used for the solvent, the flowering
frequency of the synthetic seeds was enhanced (13.3%). Based on our
morphological and histological observations, female and male regenerants that
were processed with the carbamate solution produced individual flower organs.
The conversion of sex expression did not occur. A precocious flowering system
would allow a significant reduction in the time required for perennial
seedlings to flower and can, therefore, save time required for further
experiments that employ floral homeotic mutants.