Excised rootstock roots cultured in vitro.

Root cultures have been established successfully for the Prunus rootstocks Adafuel and Adarcias (Prunus×amygdalopersica), A843 (P. armeniaca), Mariana 2624 (P. cerasifera×munsoniana) and Myrobalan 605AD (P. cerasifera), and for the apple rootstock Jork 9 (Malus×domestica). High percentages of root tips grew during the first 15 days and then decreased. Root growth was affected by culture conditions and the composition of the culture medium. Liquid medium was preferable as increasing agar concentrations reduced root growth. Darkness, instead of a 16-h photoperiod, was beneficial for Adafuel, but not the other genotypes. Sucrose at 3% was better than higher concentrations. Full Murashige and Skoog salts sustained better root growth than dilutions to 1/2 or 1/4. The addition of various organic supplements such as coconut water, casein hydrolysate or malt extract did not improve root growth, and sucrose was the best carbon source tested. Data presented here support the notion that excised root culture is an efficient experimental model to study the response to various factors, since controlled variations in the culture medium, such as those studied here, had a very noticeable effect on root length.