Western Ghats Kokum Foundation - Organic Farming Association of ...

In-vitro Culture of Garcinia indica Choisy - A Review
M. Baskaran and S. Krishnan
Department of Botany, Goa University, Goa - 403206, India.
Garcinia indica Choisy, an endemic plant to Western Ghats of India, belongs to the
family Clusiaceae and is popularly known as Kokum (Shetty and Kaveriappa 2001, Naithani
et al., 1997). It is a dioecious tree flowers in November-February and fruits ripen in the
April-June (Anonymous 1956, Sawant et al., 1999). The conventional way of propagation of
Kokum is by seeds. These natural seedling populations, due to cross pollination and
heterozygous nature of the trees, has abundant variation with respect to growth, habit,
flowering and fruiting season, fruit yield and morphological and biochemical
characteristics of fruits (Korikanthimath and Desai 2005). Also, the early ripening and high
yielding genotypes are preferred, because harvesting and processing of fruits need to be
completed before the onset of monsoon (end of April or beginning of June) in the Western
India (Chabukswar and Deodhar. 2005). To overcome the above problems, the production
of high yielding elite clones is necessary. In-vitro culture studies have been carried out by
various scientific groups and they have developed and standardized the protocol for mass
multiplication of Kokum plants through embryogenesis and multiple shoot formation. This
review summarizes all the tissue culture work carried out till date on Kokum.
Somatic Embryogenesis
Direct somatic embryogenesis was achieved by Thengane et al. (2006). They have
cultured immature seeds on Woody Plant Medium (WPM) supplemented with 6-benzyl
amino purine (BAP) 4.44–22.19 micro mole (µm) alone or in combination with anaphthaleneacetic
acid (NAA) (2.69 µm) found somatic embryos of 80% frequency within a
period of 2–3 weeks. Embryo induction was exhibited all over the explant surface. The
highest number of somatic embryos was recorded in higher concentration of BAP (22.19
µm). The origin of the embryos was confirmed histologically from sub-epidermal layer of
the seed. Sub-cultures of somatic embryos in same media did not support the embryo
maturation up to 10 weeks. However, it increased the embryogenic mass. Maturation of
embryos was achieved in the medium containing BAP (16.08 µm) in combination with
indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) (2.85–5.71 µm) and/or kinetin (KN) (4.65 µm) after 12 weeks of
culture. After maturation, embryos were converted into shoot pole. It was reported that the
maximum number of mature embryos was obtained on the medium containing BAP (16.08
µm), IAA (5.71 µm) and kinetin (4.65 µm). Within 24 weeks, 43.80% of embryos were
grown in to well-developed shoots.
For rooting, well-developed shoot pole of size 1.5–2.0 cm were transferred to the
rooting media and the rooting was observed in 20-25 days. The maximum number of root
was induced in NAA (10.74 µm) with indole-3-butyric acid IBA (4.90 µm). However, roots
induced on NAA and IBA combination observed faster growth than those with
incorporation of indole-3-propionic acid (IPA) in the rooting media. The rooted plantlets
were transferred to half-strength MS (Murashige and Skoog) medium supplemented with
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Resource Book on Kokum (Garcinia indica Choisy)
Western Ghats Kokum Foundation, Panaji - Goa