Micropropagation and selection of sugar beet tissue cultured clones for resistance to rhizomania by ELISA

In this study, sugar beet tissue culture clones were used to screen rhizomania resistant genotypes. At first, explants derived from flowering stem tips of sugar beet were transferred to shoot tip elongation media after surface sterilization. Then, the grown shoots were transferred to media containing various hormonal combinations NAA, BA, IBA, and GA3, for multiplication, growth and rooting. The clones were transferred to the soil and peat moss mixture and then were adapted to greenhouse conditions. For screening clones against rhizomania, the genotypes of adapted clones were selected and inoculated to rhizomania-infested soil. This experiment was done as a completely randomized design with in equal replicates in greenhouse. Adapted plants were transferred to the soil containing rhizomania virus. All infested soils were diluted 3 to 7 with sand. DAS- ELISA test was used for infested plants after six weeks and optical density of the samples were analyzed by SAS program. Significant difference among the genotypes was observed. Genotypes in mean comparisons were classified to a few groups from completely susceptible to completely resistant by SAS analysis and SPSS software. As in this study same genetic based clones has been used, therefore difference between the genotypes was affected in genetic difference of between them and differences within each genotypes resulted in environmental effects. Use of colons having same genotype, resulted in increasing of selection accuracy of resistant genotypes.