In vitro culture initiation techniques from field-grown marigold plants

An experiment was conducted to establish cultures from field-grown male sterile marigold plants which suffer from high microbial contamination (100.00%) when such materials are subjected to in vitro cultures. The most responsive explant was the nodal segments. For surface sterilization the treatment 0.1% HgCl₂ for 5 to 7 minutes gave the best response. Media supplementation with antibiotic was found to be an effective mode for eradicating the fungal and bacterial contaminations. MS medium supplemented with 10.0 g/1 BAP and 500 mg/1 gentamycin was found to be most effective for minimizing the microbial contaminadons.