Grey poplar explant acclimation to improve the dehydration tolerance and cryopreservation

Abstract

Cryostorage techniques have been developed to preserve the most valuable genotype from an endangered native population of Populus × canescens Aiton Sm. (grey poplar), which is located in the floodplain forest in the South Moravia region of the Czech Republic and which is difficult to propagate using cuttings. The prevailing genotype with valuable traits was selected by the simple sequence repeats method. This genotype was used to determine the most effective pre-cultivation conditions (cold hardening, and cold hardening combine with osmotic treatment) on dehydration tolerance and post-thaw recovery of the grey poplar shoot tips. The pre-cultivation and application of a modified plant vitrification solution 3 (PVS3) considerable reduced the freezable water content in shoot tips. Evaluation after eight weeks of regrowth revealed that simultaneous effect of cold and osmotic pre-treatments and application of PVS3 for 120 min enabled 93.3 ± 5.8 % recovery. The results emphasize the importance of the pre-cultivation conditions, which significantly improved the post-thaw recovery of the grey poplar explants.

Keywords

• apical segments
• cold hardening
• cryopreservation
• populus × canescens
• ssr analysis
• vitrification solution