Direct in Vitro Regeneration in Fig (Ficus Carcia L.) Cv. Brown Turkey

The fig (Ficus carcia L.) cv. brown turkey is one of the important exotic fruit crop originated from Asia. It’s nutracutical importantance, drought tolerance and remunerable economy of the crop has made faster worldwide expansion. Micropropagation of fig, have provide many advantages over the conventional methods of vegetative propagation. It ensures true to type of plants, uniform quality and rapid mass production of disease free planting materials with seasonal independency. The present study was carried out with the objective to standardize efficient and reproducible protocol for direct regeneration in fig cv. “Brown Turkey”. The current season twigs containing shoot tip as well as internodes were collected from healthy and vigorously growing mother plant. The nodal explants of length 4-6 cm were isolated and subjected for surface sterilization. The effective surface sterilization was achieved with HgCl2 0.10 % for 10 minute which resulted significantly higher aseptic culture establishment (71 %) and lowest contamination (19 %) and lesser intensity of browning ( ) on to the initiation MS medium supplemented with BAP 0.50 mg/l activated charcoal 500 mg/l. Further the in vitro established aseptic cultures were transferred to the MS medium with various concentration and combination of BAP, NAA, Kinetin for induction of shoots. The best shoot proliferation observed with MS medium supplemented with BAP 1 mg/l NAA 0.10 mg/l with 3.50 shoot/explants, 4.10 cm shoot length and 5 leaves/shoot. The microshoots of length 6-8 cm were transferred on to the M.S medium supplemented with various concentrations of IBA and NAA. Best rooting was observed with MS medium supplemented with IBA 0.50 mg/l activated charcoal 500 mg/l with 58 % rooting, 4.30 primary roots/per shoot and 7.90 cm root length.The rooted plantlets were successfully hardened under polytunnels with 100 % survival.