To establish Colocassia Esculenta (Coco yam) in tissue culture

Abstract

Even though breakthroughs on the tissue culture of Colocassia esculenta –cocoyam were already reported via somatic embryogenesis and organogenesis, Ugandan farmers continue to lack planting materials of cocoyam in adequate quantities and the few available to them maybe infested by diseases. Tissue culture can provide disease –free planting materials in large numbers, so I aimed at designing an efficient micro propagation procedure for Cocoyam in order to allow mass production of high quality planting materials by initiating Colocassia esculenta (cocoyam) in vitro and determining the optimal BAP concentration for multiplication of Cocoyam. Explants were swabbed and initiated on MS + 2.5 mg/L of BAP, these corms then were transferred to the varied BAP media MS + ( 0.0, 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 mg/L BAP ) + constant IAA (3mg/L). Data on number of buds, percentage contamination and growth was collected At confidential interval of 0.95, the correlation test revealed there is a very strong positive correlation between the number of buds produced and the amount of BAP used.