Morphogenetic Responses of Browallia Leaf Sections and Callus

Leaf sections of Browallia viscosa and B. speciosa were placedon Murashige and Skoog (1962) salts and vitamins medium (MS)containing auxins and cytokinins, singly or in combination,to elicit morphogenetic responses. B. viscosa developed extensiveroots in 4 weeks on media supplemented with indolebutyric acid(IBA), indol-3-yl acetic acid (IAA) or naphthalene acetic acid(NAA) (0·01, 0·1, 1·0, 5·0 and 10·0mg^–1), but with 2, 4-D (0·1 mg^–1) only lightyellow friable callus was obtained. Shoot initiation and elongationoccurred consistently in 4–6 weeks on leaf sections inthe presence of 6---dimethylallyl amino purine (2iP). Similarly,shoot regeneration from leaf-derived callus, initiated and sub-culturedon MS + benzyladenine (BA) + NAA only induced callus on leafexplants of both species. B. speciosa did not respond exceptfor moderate and prolific callus formation on MS + BA + NAAand Uchimiya and Murashige (1974) media respectively. Browallia viscosa, Browallia speciosa, tissue culture, regeneration, morphogenetic potential