POTENTIAL OF STARCH AS A CHEAP GELLING AGENT IN PLANT TISSUE CULTURE MEDIA

*Harvinder K. Cheema and Anil Patial
Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh - 160 014
*Corresponding author :harvinder cheema 05@hotmail.com

Abstract
In spite of its higher cost, agar is still used as most frequent gelling agent in commercialisation of plant tissue culture. The potential of tissue culture medium gelled with starch of two different varieties to support seed germination of Glycine max L. and morphogenetic response of various explants (shoot tip, leaf and root) was studied. Explants were obtained from one week old Glycine max L. plants raised in vitro. By analysing various responses, it was found that although there was no significant difference between the two gelling agents (agar and starch) in response to seed germination, yet the starch gelled medium was not found appropriate to replace agar for morphogenetic responses of various explants in culture.

Key words : Gelling agent, starch, agar, morphogenetic response.