A review The Problems Facing the Use of Tissue Culture Technique in Date Palm (Phoenix dactylifera L.)

(Abdul Latif al-Khatib)

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Abstract

Tissue culture is a recent technique mainly used for bulk rapid propagation of several commercial plant species including date palm (Phoenix dactylifera(. Normally, date palm is propagated in vitro by three methods: the first method is by embryogenesis in which vegetative embryos can continuously be formed from embryogenic callus. The embryogenesis method is characterized by its ability to produce many plants in shorter periods. The second procedure is organogenesis which provides date palm buds that eventually give plantlets without passing through the callus stage. However, since plantlets are produced directly from tissues of mother plant without passing through callus stage, they are typically identical to mother plant. The third method is in vitro propagation using young flowers in which vegetative embryos can be inducing from embryogenic callus. This technique depends on culturing of date palm young flowers on nutritional media with high auxin concentrations to induce callus formation. There are some major obstacles in practical application of date palm tissue culture in the laboratory such as: browning of cultured tissues, vitrification of tissues, bacterial and fungal contaminations, early rooting of tissue cultured buds, deterioration of embryonic callus and its inability to form embryos, callus formation on bases of rooting plantlets. The identified abnormalities and variations in date palm plants produced from tissue culture, such as failure of fruit set, multiple carpels, dwarfism of date palm trees, albinism of leaves, abnormal growth and development of leaves and fruit strands, terminal bud bending, dryness of apical bud and changes in fruit quality were also discussed. In conclusion, most of these abnormalities mentioned previously recover in most cases as the plants get old (10-year-old). Key words: browning, callus, contamination, somaclonal variation, date palm, dwarfism, fruit set, Phoenix dactylifera , problems, tissue culture
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