MICROPROPAGATION OF AMERICAN ELDERBERRY: CULTURE MEDIUM OPTIMIZATION AND FIELD PERFORMANCE

The fruits and flowers of the American elderberry (Sambucus Canadensis) hold potential as a source of food and nutraceutical products. Consequently, commercial scale orchards are beginning to appear in North America. Research to produce new cultivars and identify promising specimens from wild populations is currently underway in response to an increasing demand for large scale production of elite plants. Using only a limited number of mother plants, an efficient micropropagation method could satisfy such a demand. A detailed procedure for micropropagation of American elderberry is presented. While a suitable disinfection procedure was developed in a concurrent report, additional efforts were needed to improve multiplication rate and evaluate field performance of micropropagated plants. For the various cultivars tested, a MS medium containing 100 or 50% macro salts supplemented with 20 g•L^-1 sucrose, 8 g•L^-1 agar, 1 mg•L^-1 benzylaminopurine (BAP), and 5 µg•L^-1 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) gave satisfactory results. Explants readily acclimated to field conditions with up to 100% success rate. Long term field behaviour of micropropagated American elderberry remains to be evaluated.