In Vitro Culture and Rooting of Diospyros virginiana L.

The hard, strong, very close-grained wood of common persimmon (Diospyros virginiana L.; Ebenaceae) is desirable for specialty products such as golf club heads, percussion sticks, billiard cues, and for wood turnery. The edible fruit of cultivated varieties is sold as pulp for use in puddings, cookies, cakes, and custards. Persimmon is usually propagated by grafting. Own-rooted clonal persimmon could offer several advantages to specialty fruit growers such as elimination of grafting, graft incompatibility issues, and improved rootstocks for variety testing. Four mature, grafted (male and female) persimmon genotypes and one hybrid were used for nodal explant culture. Nodal stem explants were cultured on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium containing 10 mu M zeatin, 3% (w/v) sucrose, and 0.7% (w/v) Bacto agar. Explants were routinely transferred to fresh medium every 3 weeks until shoot cultures were established. All nodal explants excised from grafted greenhouse plants produced at least one viable shoot. For in vitro rooting of microshoots, half-strength MS medium with 0, 5, 10, or 15 mu M indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), 0.1 g.L-1 phloroglucinol, 3% (w/v) sucrose, and 0.7% (w/v) Bacto agar were tested with a 10-day dark culture treatment followed by culture in the light. Best rooting (14% to 87%) was achieved on medium containing 5 mu M IBA for the common persimmon genotypes with means averaging from 0.5 to 3.9 roots per shoot. Ninety-one percent rooting with 5.3 +/- 2.6 roots per shoot was achieved for the hybrid persimmon. Rooted plants were successfully acclimatized to the greenhouse.