In Vitro Regeneration of Lilium Henryi Baker and Assessment of Genetic Stability in Micropropagated Plants of Using RAPD and ISSR Techniques

Lilium henryi Baker is a native lily from mountainous regions of central China and has great potential as an ornamental plant for its long-lasting orange flowers and recurred petals. The plant is much more tolerant to lime soil than most Lilium species. To effectively conserve and utilize this plant for our future breeding, an efficient micropropagation protocol was established. Explants from bulb scales were disinfected using ethanol/ mercuric chloride and cultured on MS medium with different exogenous plant growth regulators (BA, TDZ and NAA). The better results, multiplication rate of 15 shoots per explants, were obtained in the medium containing 0.5 and 2 mg/L NAA and BA. To detect somaclonal variation among the donor plant and micropropagated plants, random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) markers and inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers were conducted. A total of 35 RAPD primers were used to amplify clones and the donor plant, which yielded zero polymorphic band among 247 scorable bands. Analysis of ISSR using 30 primers produced very lower genetic variations. Only 5 polymorphic bands were generated, which resulted to 1.1% polymorphism. The low percentage of genetic variations indicated that the genetic stability of tissue culture plants for L. henryi and the feasibility of this tissue culture system. Dr. Qixiang Zhang is the corresponding author.