Encapsulation of in vitro-derived explants of olive (cv. Moraiolo). I: effects of pretreatments, their size and tha coating.

Micropropagation overcome the risks related to the diffusion of pest or diseases when plant material obtained by traditional vegetative multiplication is introduced in new Countries. However, the transport of micropropagated plantlets is difficult because temperature and/or fluctuation in relative humidity can damage plantlets, just after acclimatization or during transport in glass-container. The encapsulation in sodium alginate matrix of the in vitro-derived explants can represent one solution for these difficulties and the results carried out in this work permit to consider this technology, applied to micropropagated microcuttings (mct) of olive (cv. Moraiolo), potentially able to ensure transport of olive genotypes for long distance. In fact, the described experiments showed that viability and regrowth abilities of encapsulated mct were satisfactory although influenced by the explant size; moreover, the achieve high viability and regrowth potential, the explants need to be treated with gibberellic acid before their encapsulation.