An Efficient In Vitro Propagation Culture Protocol for Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea L.)

An efficient in vitro propagation culture protocol was developed for one of the most important herb medicinal plants purple coneflower. Under the protocol, adventitious buds were first regenerated from leaf, petiole and root explants of aseptic seedlings on MS medium with 0.3 mg/l BA and 0.01 mg/l NAA, and then these adventitious buds were rooted and grown into plantlets of certain maturity on MS media with 0.01 mg/l NAA for providing more explant materials for a subsequent adventitious bud regeneration culture. It was found that explants taken from plantlets of different maturity had different adventitious bud regeneration ability, with those from two and a half months old plantlets having the highest regeneration efficiency, and with root explants having the largest number of adventitious buds regenerated. Results of the experiments demonstrated that it was possible to obtain at least one million plantlets ready for transplantation within one year starting from one single in vitro grown plantlet.