Regeneration of an endangered Fritillaria (Fritillaria raddeana) species via petal and leaf explants

Fritillaria raddeana is one of the most fascinating wild flowers, belonging to Lilliaceae family, native to Iran. It is an important ornamental-medical bulbous plant, tolerant to arid conditions and stony slopes but facing extinction. There have been very few reports exist, so any studies on the species would be of great importance. Regardless of mutation occurrence, successful regeneration will be a prerequisite for further researches that must be done on the endangered plant species. This research presents an in vitro callus induction and indirect regeneration of F. raddeana via culturing petal and leaf. The leaf (before flowering) and petal (green to yellow flower buds) explants excited from plant and surface sterilized and were cultured on MS media containing different concentrations of Auxin and Cytokinin. The explants were first kept at darkness and 18ºC for callus induction, then were transferred to light condition with the same temperature. The temperature was raised to 20ºC, when the calli sub cultured into regeneration media. Although due to the low amount of bacterial and fungal contamination, conservation of parent plants, adequate and ready available explants, both petals and leaves are acceptable explants, among them petal showed better and quicker response to variable plant growth regulators. The best medium for callus formation (82.66%) and indirect regeneration (36.66%) via petal explants was MS medium supplemented with 2 mgl-1 TDZ and 0.5 mgl-1 IBA. Therefore, the mentioned plant growth regulators were more suitable than the others for indirect regeneration of F. raddeana.