Salt Stress Tolerance of Strawberry Cultivar In vitro and In vivo

The present study was established to enhance NaCl tolerance in strawberry cultivars which are sensitive to salt stress. Leaf ex-plants were treated with EMS to induce genetic variation and then used for callus induction and shoot regeneration under salt stress.regenerated plantlets were grown in greenhouse for three months and response to NaCl was evaluated compared with in vivo plants. Genetic variation based on RAPD-PCR technique was used to detect variability. In vitro regenerated plants derived from leaf discs treated with EMS exhibited clear improvement in these parameters compared with in vivo plants especially at high concentrations of NaCl. In vitro derived cultures accumulated lower Na associated with high chlorophyll content and peroxidase enzyme than in vivo plants. Eight of different RAPD oligonucleotide primers were a good tool to diagnose the genetic variation between treated and untreated plants. The advantage of this study has revealed that using EMS as chemical mutagen has improved strawberry for NaCl tolerance.