Influence of Gene Dose on In Vitro Culture Responses of Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea L.)

The main objective for this study was to evaluate the influence of gene dose on culture responses of adventitious buds regeneration in one of the most important medicinal plant purple coneflower. Explants of leaf, petiole and root with same gene composition but of various doses of one set, two sets and four sets of chromosomes were taken from in vitro cultured haploid (2n=1X=11), diploid (2n=2X=22) and tetraploid (2n=4X=44) plantlets and cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) basal medium supplemented with different levels of benzyladnine (BA). It was found that explants with heavier chromosome dose need higher BA concentration to achieve higher regeneration frequency. In the experiments, explants of haploid and diploid showed higher regeneration potential at 0.3 mg/1 BA where as tetraploid required a higher BA concentration of 0.5 mg/1 to accelerate the ability.