In vitro propagation and shootlets assessment for drought and salinity tolerance of traditional accessions of potato

Abstract

Abiotic stresses, including heat, drought, and salinity, pose severe threats to agricultural yields, globally affecting essential crops like potatoes. The aim of this study is to establish an in vitro culture system for three potato accessions: Tal Amara 1 (TA1), Tal Amara 2 (TA2), and Tal Amara 3 (TA3) and to quantify their tolerance to temperature, drought, salinity, and combined stresses. The results demonstrated that MS0 (devoid of growth regulators) medium was the best for culture initiation, with a percentage of reactive meristems of 82.22%, whereas MS1 (0.35 mg L-1 Kin + 0.2 mg L-1 IAA + 0.1 mg L-1 GA3) medium resulted in the highest multiplication rate of 5.5. The most heat tolerant accession was TA1, with shootlets lengths ranging from 2 cm to 4.4 cm at temperatures of 4°C and 38°C respectively. Concerning the effect of combined drought and temperature stresses, TA1 and TA3 showed tolerance to the different mannitol concentrations. Likewise, the most prominent accession in terms of combined salinity and temperature tolerance was TA2, with shootlets lengths of 3.2 cm (60 Mm NaCl, 22°C), 2.03 cm (60 Mm NaCl, 4°C) and 1.6 cm (60 Mm NaCl, 38°C).

Keywords

• Mannitol
• micropropagation
• sodium chloride
• Solanum tuberosum L.
• temperature