Aloe vera Gel as a Substitute for Commercial Auxins in the In-vitro Culture of Sour Banana (Mysore AAB)

Abstract

Banana (Musa spp.) is an important tropical fruit crop known for its economic and nutritional value, and the sour banana variety Mysore AAB is highly valued in Sri Lanka for its taste, yield, low price and storage characteristics. Although plant growth regulators, especially auxins like Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA), are essential for the initiation of roots and development of shoots in tissue culture; these synthetic auxins increase production costs and limit accessibility. Therefore, the current study was conducted at Plant Tissue Culture Research and Development Laboratory of the University of Colombo Institute for Agro-Technology and Rural Sciences, Sri Lanka, from May to October 2024, with the objective of investigating the potential of Aloe vera gel (AVG) as a substitute for IAA in the in-vitro culture of banana. Explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with varying concentrations of AVG (120, 160, 200, 240, 280, 360, 440 and 520 g/L) and compared with a control containing 0.1 mg/L IAA. Number of roots, shoot height (mm), root dry weight (g) and shoot dry weight (g) were collected over a period of 6 weeks and the collected data were subjected to analysis of variance and mean separation using Tukey’s test, at 5% significance level. Results showed that, compared to the control, treatments containing AVG initially produced significant differences in root number among the treatments, however these differences diminished by the sixth week (p>0.05). A comparable pattern was noted in the root dry weight which produced no significant differences ((p>0.05) among the treatments. Although the shoot height at 6th week showed significant differences ((p<0.05) among treatments, most treatments performed similar to the control (45.9 mm), indicating AVG as an effective alternative to auxins. Shoot dry weight also showed a similar trend, accumulating a comparable shoot biomass in the control, with the treatments containing AVG. These findings emphasize Aloe vera gel as a cost-effective, accessible, and sustainable choice for the micropropagation of sour banana (Mysore AAB).