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In vitro culture initiation and multiplication
Figure 5.7: Visual observations of Romulea sabulosa cultures. Cultures including both kinetin
and 2,4-D appears to exhibit embryo-like structures.
5.3.3 Explant comparison
Despite the apparent larger number of shoots produced between cultures in which
embryos were used as explants compared to seedling organs, there is no significant
difference between the numbers of shoots produced according to a paired t-test at
95% confidence limits. There was also no significant difference between the number
of shoots formed on media supplemented with kinetin and the number of shoots
formed on media supplemented with other plant growth regulator treatments (Figure
5.8). These results show that a medium supplemented with 23.2 µM mTR and 0.5 µM
NAA significantly increases the amount of shoots formed per embryo compared to
the control. This is not the case with seedling hypocotyls. Here cytokinins did not
increase the number of shoots formed per explant (Figure 5.8). The number of
shoots produced on a medium with 23.2 µM mTR and 0.5 µM NAA was not
significantly different from the number of shoots observed on a medium
supplemented with 2.3 µM kinetin or 2.3 µM mTR and 0.5 µM NAA.
Explant response data is not shown, as there were no significant differences in
explant response between the two explant types. Although these differences are not
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