Potential of Surface Sterilants to Control the Microbial Contamination of field grown Fir (Abiespindrow Royle.) Seedling Explants Intended for in vitro Culture

An effective disinfection protocol for micropropagation of fir (Abies pindrowRoyle.) using nodal and internodal segments as explants was developed. The explants were sterilized with different sterilants for different time duration. The present studies on the effect of different sterilization regimes revealed that maximum aseptic cultures were obtained from both explants nodal and internodal segments when treated with combination of 0.1% mercuric chloride for 7 minutes and 10% sodium hypochlorite for 15 minutes, but surviving percentage was low because this treatment resulted in necrosis and tissue injury of explants. However, mercuric chloride (0.1%) for 10 min resulted in low percentage of aseptic culture but gave highest percentage of surviving explants as most of researchers found that the single sterilant is more effective than the combination.