Micropropagation of adult cherimoya (Annona cherimola Mill.) CV. Fino de Jete

Summary A micropropagation procedure for the adult cherimoya tree (Annona cherimola Mill.) is described. Axillary shoot proliferation was obtained after culturing nodal sections from Annona cherimola cv. ‘Fino de Jete’, on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 2.28 μM zeatin. Roots were induced after preincubation of shoots for 3d in light on MS basal medium supplemented with lgl⁻¹ activated charcoal, followed by culturing for 10 d (7 d dark and 3 d light) on MS medium with 492 μM indole-3-butyrie acid (IBA), 15 gl⁻¹ sucrose, and 200 mgl⁻¹ citric acid. Sixty-eight percent of induced shoots rooted after transferring to the same medium without auxin and with the macroelements at half strength and the sucrose at 20gl⁻¹. About 65% of rooted shoots survived after acclimatization. The procedures described herein may prove useful for clonal micropropagation of selected genotypes of cherimoya.