GENETIC RELATIONSHIP AND IN VITRO PROPAGATION OF PHALAENOPSIS GIGANTEA

Phalaenopsis, with long arching sprays of flowers, isamong the most beautiful flowers in the world.Phalaenopsis is an important genus and one of themost popular epiphytic monopodial orchids, growncommercially for production of cut flowers and pottedplants. Most of them have different and interestingmorphological characteristics which have differentvalue to the breeders.Phalaenopsis gigantea one of the most difficult togrow and has the potential of producing beautifulhybrids was selected for this study in developing arapid and efficient in vitro propagation technique.Furthermore, Study was carried out using molecularcharacterization through Random Amplified PolymorphicDNA (RAPD) analyses for 20 species of Phalaenopsiswas conducted to determine their genetic relationships.