EFFICIENT USE OF TEMPORARY IMMERSION BIOREACTOR (TIB) ON PINEAPPLE (Ananas comosus L.) MULTIPLICATION AND ROOTING ABILITY

Abstract

Pineapple (Ananas comosus L.) is one of the most potential fruit crop growing in Ethiopia due to suitable agro-ecology and economic importance. However, it is difficult to meet the demand for planting materials using the conventional propagation techniques due to production inefficiency and disease transmission. The experiment is laid in Completely Randomized Design with three treatments of vessels used along its media type, Temporary Immersion Bioreactor, TIB (RITA®, Vitropic, France) , Glass jam jar and plastic jars , replicated six times on MS medium. A highly significant difference (p<0.001) was observed between culturing vessels with the same media supplement. From this study, it was found that pineapple explants cultured on TIB having full strength MS media supplemented with 2 mgl-1BA and 30gl–1 sucrose was found to be better which gave an average multiplication of 13.17 shoots per explant within six weeks of culture. Similarly plantlets cultured on TIB with half strength MS media supplemented with 3mgl-1 IBA and 40 g l-1 sucrose developed on average 16.33 roots having 6.27 cm length with well developed hairy root in four weeks of culture period that performed better in acclimatization facility and open field too.