Petunias in vitro

Fase 1 – Establishment. Three diferent varietys of Petunias have be established from seed  in Vitro at Peak Plants tissue culture laboratory, namingly, Petunia grandiflora, Petunia pendula and P. pendula f1 hybrid cv “reflexions”.- Seeds were carefully desinfected with a bleach solution and inoculated in a mixture of half strenght MS and WPM medium. Adition of small concentrations of certain growth regulators in the medium allows secondary embryogenisis to occur and several plantlets can be obtain from a single seed.  Besides this some callus masses form in certain cases wich can be recultured in similar medium allowing some organogenisis to occur but vitrification becomes a problem for most of the plantlets formed by this process. 

Fase 2 – Propagation. Propagation of Petunia after establishment is easy nevertheless certain phisiological problems arise from species with such a high growth rates, being vitrification and whitening of explants the most serious ones. In the case of Petunia little whitening has occured so far, but vitrification is in some cases observed. This problem has been minimised so far by adusting agar oncentration and adding activated charcoal, being the last option the most efective to reduce the phenomena. – Having started from seed material a long intensive cataloging of the cultures is necessary to allow separate cultures to be obtained and ultimatelly, even the selection of chimaeral individuals for market inovation.