Influence of cold pretreatment on shoot regeneration from callus in date palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.) cv. ‘Barhee’

Mass propagation of date palm through indirect somatic embryogenesis or organogenesis has attracted the interest of commercial producers. But, this technique still faces some problems that hindered the production of date palm plantlets in vitro. Tissue browning is one of the serious problems that reduce callus growth and shoot regeneration. So the objective of the present study is to investigate the effect of cold pretreatment on callus growth, shoot regeneration, and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) activity during the callus culture. Results showed that a high survival rate of callus cultures (100%) were obtained when cultures were incubated in low temperature (cold treatment) for 45 and 75 days. On the other hand, total amount on phenolic compounds was also reduced to 0.47 and 0.53 mg GAE/g after same period of incubation (45 and 75 days respectively) at low temperature. In additional, our results showed that the highest frequency of shoot formation (66.67 and 73.34, %) and the highest shoot numbers (7.8 and 8.6 shoots/100 mg) were obtained from callus treated with low temperature for 45 and 75 days, respectively.