Establishment Of A Virus-Free Scale-Up Micropropagaton System For Rose Flowers Plant

The prevalence of viral diseases that mainly harm to roses in Hangzhou, Haining and Jiaxing city, the main rose flower production area in Zhejiang Prov, was investigated. The key factors affecting the establishment of a scaled-up micro-propagation and meristem culture system for roses were studied using ’Vendela’,’Tess’ and ’High grove’ as plant material.. In addition, the effect of using light emitting diodes (LED) as a possible alternative to fluorescent lamps was studied using white light of three different colour temperatures and four different ratios of red (630 nm) and blue (465 nm). The results were as follows:(1) The main viruses detected in Hangzhou samples were apple mosaic virus and arabis mosaic virus; all Jiaxing samples carried these two viruses. The main viruses detected in Haining samples were apple mosaic virus and prunus necrotic ringspot virus.(2) A micropropagation system via direct organogenesis of three rose varieties was established using axillary buds as the explants. The proliferation rate of adventitious buds was 2.5, all the shoots could be induced to root successfully, and 95% rooted plantlets survived after transfer to the greenhouse, showing that the system is suitable for large-scale production of rose plantlets. Regeneration via indirect organogenesis was also established with leaves of ’Vendela’ as explants.(3) In experiments with meristem tissue culture there were no significant differences between dark treatments (less than 6 days) and light treatments at the beginning of the process, but the survival of meristem tissue decreased rapidly when the dark culture period was longer than 6 days. Addition of banana power, lactoalbumin hydrolysate and proline with low concentration in the medium improved the elongation of meristem tissue, while GA in the medium inhibited tissue elongation. RT-PCR results showed that 80% plantlets regenerated from meristem tissue were free of detectable virus.(4) In experiments using LED lighting, plants cultured under different mixtures of LED red and LED blue light grew better by some indicators than those cultured under fluorescent light (FL) or white LED, and there were no significant differences between plants cultured under FL and the different colour temperature white light LEDs when the light period was no less than 14h. This indicates that LEDs can be used in place of FL as the artificial light source for tissue culture of roses.The cost of white LED lamps and energy consumption was equal to that of FL after 180 days under the system of rooting culture developed during this study.