Tissue culture of Furcraea (Furcraea gigantea Vent) var. ‘Green’

Furcraea (Furcraea gigantea Vent.) is an important ornamental foliage plant which adds an aesthetic value in the garden. There are mainly two types of Furcraea viz. ‘Green’ and ‘Variegated’. Plant flowers once in its life and then dies. These bulbils are used for further propagation. This is not rapid enough to meet its demand for all the time. Bulbils produce purely true to type plantlet. Hence, considering these aspects viz. with a view to standardize micropropagation technique for rapid large scale multiplication and with a view to induce variability in ‘Green’ genotype Furcraea, innovative method viz. callus culture were tried. Results revealed that standardized protocol for micropropagation technique for Furcraea, could produced rapid and large scale plantlets through out the year. Considering the present finding for multiplication rate, 6.14 lack plantlets could be produced per year as against average 1250 bulbils obtained at the age of 8–10 years. In callus culture effort, two types of variants were noted one with green leaves having white lining on the margin and other totally albino (white) were isolated. These variants were rooted on MS medium + 0.1 mg/l IBA. The former types of plants were established in polybag and in field also with healthy growth. On the basis of phynotypical characters, total sixteen promising somaclonal variants were identified. While albino was not surviving in field, however, exclusively beauty of albino plant could be survived in MS medium in bottle as terrarium garden.