In vitro proliferation of Olea europaea L.: preliminary investigations on the effect of explant orientation and size

So, a great interest is taken in the improvement or development of efficient and cost-effective techniques for propagation to meet the increased demand of plant material. Micropropagation represents a suitable solution to that, if some procedural limits can be overcome; to give an example, many researches confirmed that olive is characterized by a marked apical dominance and that the in vitro multiplication is strongly influenced by the genotype. Furthermore, several previous studies demonstrated the great effectiveness of zeatin as growth regulator in olive, although it is very expensive. In attempt to improve the micropropagation protocol of the cv. Moraiolo, the effect of uninodal explants orientation in respect to the nutritive medium (vertical or horizontal) on the proliferation rate was monitored (Experiment 1). Moreover, further investigations were conducted in order to evaluate the in vitro proliferation of binodal olive explants, planted both vertically and horizontally on the medium (Experiment 2), represented by the Olive Modified Medium (OMM) in both experiments.