Legumes: Micropropagation and Conservation

In recent years there has been renewed interest in natural medicines and considerable attention has been paid to utilize ecofriendly plant based products for different human diseases. Consequently continuous utilization of medicinal plants from the natural population resulted in extensive loss of their habitats over the years. Therefore, alternative techniques need to be developed for their propagation and short term in vitro conservation. Advances in biotechnology, especially in vitro techniques and molecular biology provide some important tools for multiplication, conservation and management of medicinal plant resources. The present study describes highly efficient and reproducible in vitro propagation system for rapid multiplication and conservation of an important medicinal legume Senna sophera (L.) Roxb. by exploiting various techniques of tissue culture. Short term conservation strategy has also been developed by the use of encapsulation technique i.e. synthetic seed production through encapsulation in alginate beads. Furthermore, the inclusion of histological investigations help to understand the mode of regeneration.