A FAST PROTOCOL FOR IN VITRO PROPAGATION OF GINGER (ZINGIBER OFFICINALE ROSC.) OF A TRIBAL DISTRICT OF INDIA

India has been known as the ‘land of spices’ from time immemorial. Among the spices, ginger (Zingiber officinale Rosc.) contributes greatly towards human health and is regarded as a food medicine for several ailments. The major limitation in increasing production and productivity of ginger is lack of adequate disease.-free planting materials of high yielding varieties. As the major diseases are spread through contaminated seed-rhizomes, the possibility of producing pathogen-free planting materials using tissue culture is attractive. Therefore, the present investigation was undertaken to standardise a rapid, efficient, and reliable regeneration protocol for in vitro propagation of a high yielding ginger, cv. Suravi, collected from the high altitude research station at Pottangi (Koraput, a tribal district of Orissa), India. The axillary bud (0.2–0.5 mm size) from the sprouted rhizome was taken as the explant. The most ideal surface sterilant was found to be 0.1 HgCl₂ for 13 min, which reduced the total infection (fungal + bacterial) significantly to 3.3% and took shortest time for bud emergence (9.3 days) in standard Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium. The extent of survival (96.7%) and production of buds per explant (2.7) were maximum with this sterilant. MS medium supplemented with 3.0 mg/L benzyl amino purine (BAP) and 0.4 mg/L naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) was ideal for shoot proliferation and resulted in maximum number of total shoots from a single explant (36.0), maximum shoot length (6.1 cm) with 4.7 leaves after a second sub-culturing. For rooting, MS supplemented with NAA (0.5 mg/L) was found to be more effective and produced the maximum number of roots per shoot (13.3) and the maximum root length (2.0 cm) plus taking the least time for root initiation (10.3 days). The in vitro plantlets were prehardened in ½ MS liquid medium. The hardening and acclimatization media mixture of soil: sand: farm yard manure (1:1:1) was found to be best for survival of the plantlets in ginger.