Abstract

The present study was undertaken to fix the suitable concentration of 6-benzyl aminopurine on shoot development from meristem for producing virus free potato plantlet. The experiment consisted of five potato cultivars namely Diamant, Heera, Dheera, Granula and Cardinal for meristem culture and four 6-benzyl aminopurine levels namely 0, 1.0, 1.5, 2.0 mg/l.  As a whole, twenty treatments were allotted in complete randomized design with three replications. Resulted in vitro regenerated plantlets were used as treatment for double antibody sandwich (DAS-) , enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test, while, the infected plant parts were used as positive control. In virus elimination through meristem culture, Cardinal with 1 mg l^-1 6-benzyl aminopurine gave maximum number of shoots (2.43 cm) explant^-1, whereas, Dheera with 1.5 mg l^-1 6-benzyl aminopurine gave the tallest plantlet (5.23 cm). On the other hand, explants of Dheera and Cardinal with 1.5 mg l^-1 6-benzyl aminopurine and explants of Diamant, Heera, Granula and Cardinal with 2.0 mg l^-1 6-benzyl aminopurine produced no roots . Finally, after DAS-ELISA test, the infected field samples developed yellow color but in vitro regenerated plantlets of all the varieties under study showed 100% virus freeness.

Key words: Virus elimination, meristem culture, virus detection, seed potato.

Abbreviation

Abbreviations: BAP, 6-Benzyl aminopurine; DAS-ELISA, double antibody sandwich enzyme linked immunosorbent assay; CRD, completely randomized design; MS,Murashige and Skoog; PVX, potato virus X; PVY, potato virus Y.