Effects of Explant and Culture Medium on Shoot and Bulblet Production in Fritillaria imperialis

Fritillar iaimperialis is one of the most beautiful ornamental plants all over the world and is propagated by bulbs and seeds. Uncontrolled harvesting of this plant from its natural habitats resulted to exposure it to endanger. Due to the limitations of conventional methods of propagation, therefore using a tissue culture technique may be a suitable and alternative technique for large- scale propagation of this species. In this study, bulb scale explants were cultured on MS medium and Gamborg medium (B5) and different explants of sexual embryos, eggs, ovaries, leaves and stems were cultured only on MS medium. Results showed that among the different explants only bulb scale and embryo explants produced bulblets during subcultures. Also the highest number of bulblets was produced from scale explants in concentrations of 5 mg l-1 NAA and 3 mg l-1 BAP. Due to the stronger shoot and root induction and also the greater number of bulblet production via scale culture than embryos, the scale explants is recommended for micropropagation of Fritillar iaimperialis.