Growth and Morphogenesis in Neptunia oleracea, an Aquatic Legume - Can Aquatic Weeds be Useful?

摘要

Neptunia oleracea Lour, is a tropical aquatic legume with touch-sensitive leaves, aerenchyma filled floating/spongy stems, abundantly branched reddish adventitious roots, nodding yellow inflorescences and clusters of red nodules generally borne at nodes. This paper presents some aspects of research investigations on growth and morphogenesis in N. oleracea using tissue culture techniques. In vitro culture proved to be a powerful technique to assess the ability of seedling explants to regenerate underthe influence of growth regulators. It afforded opportunities to establish a continuously growing and differentiating tissue culture and obtain plantlets for possible selection of variants. We found that in vitro raised seedling explants namely root, hypocotyl, leaf and cotyledon profusely callused without organogenesis in response to addition of BAP (10~(-5)M) to the growth medium. This unorganised callus could be maintained through several passages in the same condition except for occasional root induction. The callus produced shoot buds when transferred to a medium containing a lower concentration of BAP at 10~(-6)M. This feature could be repeatedly demonstrated and retained in long term cultures maintained on medium containing BAP (10~(-6)M). The histology of the unorganised and the shoot bud organising callus was also studied. This paper also examines the fascinating world of Neptunia oleracea through a review of recent works on its usefulness as a food and traditional medicinal source as well asa biofilter, biofertilizer, antitumor agent and much more. It is hoped that these investigations will add to our knowledge and provide researchers in this field with the inspiration to similarly look at every plant as a new treasure and as an untold story.