محمد هدایت

Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) is an economically important fruit tree at the tropical and subtropical regions of the world that is cultivated for its delicious fruits. In addition, the tree is also valued for its pharmaceutical properties and ornamental usage. Pomegranate is conventionally propagated by hard wood and soft wood cuttings. However, this traditional propagation method does not ensure disease-free and healthy plants and it depends on the season. In addition, this method is a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process and a large numbers of cuttings do not survive during plantation. Micropropagation in fruit tree would help in overcoming difficulties of vegetative propagation, producing true to-type plants and rapid and mass production of planting materials. Hence, developing an efficient in vitro technique for the propagation of pomegranate is of great importance. For proliferation stage, the experiment was completely randomized factorial design. In this investigation lateral bud of four pomegranate cultivars Meykhosh, Rabab, Shirin shahvar and Native dashtestan were placed on MS medium supplemented with various concentrations of BA (1 and 2 mg/l) and NAA (0, 0/5 and 1 mg/l) for proliferation. The best concentration of BA and NAA for Meykhosh and Rabab was MS medium supplemented with 2 mg/l BA and respectively 0/5 and 1 NAA mg/.l The best concentrations of plant growth regulator for Shirin shahvar was 1mg/l BA and 0 mg/l NAA and for Native dashtestan was 1mg/l BA and 0/5 mg/l NAA. For two cultivars, Meykhosh and Shirin shahvar MS medium supplemented with 1 mg/l NAA, for Rabab 1 mg/l NAA and Native dashtestan 1 mg/l IBA was most effective for rooting of shoots. Rooted plantlets of four cultivars were successfully acclimatized and transferred into soil.