Abstract

Solanum tuberosum belongs to the family Solanaceae that includes the most important agricultural species e.g., tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), pepper (Capsicum annum), tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum), and eggplant (Solanum melongena). Potato is considered one of the leading dietary crops throughout the world and cultivation in Pakistan is categorized into three growing seasons generally spring, summer, and autumn. Quality potato tuber production, free from diseased and viral contamination, is one of the important prerequisites for higher production of potatoes in the field. Unfortunately, tubers produced in the field have a higher prevalence of disease and a low multiplication rate. This has been considered a major restriction in potato cultivation. Micropropagation was employed for mass production of higher quality disease-free tuber seed as planting material and selecting those varieties that can withstand biotic or abiotic stresses. Tuber development is greatly dependent on sucrose, growth regulators. Therefore, the impact of different growth regulators (IAA, BAP, and Kinetin) and sucrose concentration were assessed for tuber formation. For the evaluation of microtuberization and micropropagation, sprouts of potato tuber were sterilized and cultured on MS-0 semi-solid media. The regenerated shoots were cut into nodal segments, and these nodal segments were shifted to MS media having different concentrations of sucrose and growth regulators. These cultured nodal segments were incubated under dark and light conditions and some completely developed plants were shifted to the dark conditions. The maximum tuberization was observed on MS-III media (IAA 0.5mg/L and BAP 4mg/L) but tuber was also produced on MS-I, and MS-IV under light conditions, and dark conditions tuberization process was observed on MS-II media. These results showed that growth regulators had a positive impact on tuber formation and IAA and BAP showed better results regarding tuber size and weight.