Development of Cell Lines for Tolerance Against Culture Filtrates of Fusarium Solani and Their Regeneration in ginger (Zingiber Officinale Rose)

Embryogenic cultures were established and maintained from the healthy buds of newly identified high yielding ginger strain. The embryogenic cultures were challenged to different concentrations of the culture filtrates of Fusarium solani isolated from the diseased rhizomes collected from the problematic areas for about 2 months. At 20% concentration of culture filtrates, about 90% of cultures died after two weeks and 100% after 4 weeks in unselected cell lines. After two weeks, actively growing surviving cell sectors were selected as the tolerant cell lines. The selected cell lines were screened thrice by subculturing them every two weeks to medium with 20% concentration of cultural filtrates. The resistance of the finally selected cell lines to toxic culture filtrates was compared with nonselected cell lines which could not grow on medium with cultural filtrates. Many well developed embryogenic cell masses formed when the toxic selected embryogenic cultures and normal cell lines were incubated on normal regeneration medium (MS salts + BAP 3 mgl⁻¹ + NAA 0.5 mgl⁻¹ + Agar 0.7%). Embryogenic cell masses differentiated into green leafy structures and subsequently entire plantlets having both shoots and roots from both normal and selected cell lines.