Trehalose drastically extends the in vitro vegetative culture period and facilitates maintenance of Torenia fournieri plants

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While torenia (Torenia fournieri Lind.) is a useful model flower for molecular biological studies of floral architecture, the maintenance of plant materials and resulting transgenic plants requires vegetative propagation due to its heterozygous nature. Reduction of labor and costs for maintaining thousands of in vitro torenia cultures is therefore a critical issue. We found that substituting trehalose for sucrose drastically extended the culture period to 70 days, which is more than twice as long as for the common, sucrose-based medium, without reduction in plant viability. Comparative measurement of the plant mass indicated that the increased survival benefit of the trehalose-based medium might be on account of improvement in the rhizosphere environment through reduction of root density in the culture, rather than by reduced plant growth. No harmful effects arising from the trehalose-based medium were observed in 1,800 laboratory lines during the bimonthly subculture for over 12 months, except for a wilting on the first transfer to the trehalose-based medium. In conjunction with the use of the commercial food additive, Okome-ni-TREHA® rather than reagent-grade trehalose, we have succeeded in reducing the costs and labor associated with the culture medium to less than one third of those for the sucrose-based system.
2011-03-25