Short-term storage of alginate-encapsulated protocorm-like bodies of Dendrobium nobile Lindl.: an endangered medicinal orchid from North-east India

Synthetic seed technology is an exciting and rapidly growing area of research as deals with conservation and storage of rare, endangered and desirable genotypes along with its easy handling and transportation. As propagation of many ornamental and medicinally important plant species is labour intensive, application of different growth retardants and osmotica in simple artificial seed system would dramatically reduce labour requirement by storing the germplasm in vitro. Moreover, the primary aim of developing in vitro storage methods is to reduce the frequent demands of subculturing and preserving the unique genetic constituent of the germplasm. Dendrobium nobile is a pharmaceutically important orchid mostly used in the Chinese herbal drug industry for its medicinal property. Commercial exploitation of this species has considerably depleted their population in wild. Hence, for conserving this valuable germplasm, short term in vitro storage of Protocorm-Like Bodies (PLBs) of D. nobile was carried out using different osmotica (sucrose and mannitol). It was observed that incorporation of low sucrose and mannitol (3 and 5 %) in the encapsulating matrix showed almost similar results with that of control. In all these cases, more than half of PLBs burst out from the matrix thus making these concentrations of sucrose and mannitol along with control not suitable for storage studies. However, with the increase in concentration to 7.5 and 12.5 % in the encapsulating matrix, no outburst of encapsulated PLBs was recorded till 60 days of storage; hence it can be concluded that these concentrations play an important role in minimizing the growth of PLBs during storage condition.