Riel Carlo O. Ingeniero Jennifer S. Ramirez Ma. Rowena T. Tagamolila (February 2006)
Philippine Science High School Western Visayas Campus – Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PSHS WVC), Brgy. Bito-on, Jaro, Iloilo City 5000, Philippines
ABSTRACT
Contaminated tissue cultured shoots are usually discarded. However, discarding these shoots also mean that some investments are lost.
This study explored the possibility of rehabilitating the shoots by soaking the contaminated tissue cultured shoots into aqueous extracts of 8 mg mL and 10 mg mL concentrations of garlic and spring onion before re-inoculation into a newly prepared axenic culture media.
Aspergillus niger was used as the contaminant for the tissue cultured lakatan (hisa acuminata colla). Four replicates were used in the study. For each of the four replicates, there were six set-ups. Five set-ups were inoculated with Aspergillus niger The remaining one set-up remained axenic or free from contamination. After which four of five set-ups were treated with prepared soaking solution.
Results showed that the number of living shoots of treated (contaminated and soaked) set-ups and contaminated control set-up decrease and contamination still could be seen.
One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Multiple Comparison by Post Hoc Least Significant Difference of the mean number of living shoots of tissue cultured shoots in each set-up showed that significant difference only existed when normal set-up (axenie) is compared to the other five set-ups. This shows that treating contaminated shoots with 8 mg ml and 10 mg ml. concentrations of garlic and spring onion is not eflective in controlling or inhibiting the growth of fungi and may even cause the decrease in the number of living shoots.