Abstract
Using healthy cuttings can enhance the productivity of cultivars susceptible to viral diseases. However, due to the unavailability of healthy cuttings, farmers often have to rely on infected ones. This study aims to enhance the health quality of planting material by using thermotherapy and meristem culture techniques on two cassava cultivars. To achieve this, cuttings from the BFM206 and BFM260 cultivars were subjected to heat treatment in a thermotherapy chamber and a control treatment in field conditions. The heat treatment involved exposing the cuttings to a temperature of 37°C for the first week. The temperature was then increased by 2°C each week over four weeks, reaching 37°C, 39°C, 41°C, and 43°C, respectively. After the treatment, the resulting shoots were used as mother plants for meristem culture. The experimental design was a split-plot with 5 repetitions. The parameters studied included the severity and incidence of cassava mosaic disease, the regeneration rate, the callus formation rate, and growth parameters. The heat treatment resulted in a significant difference between the cultivars in terms of the severity of cassava mosaic disease (P < 0.001) and the regeneration rate (P = 0.008). Furthermore, compared to the control treatment, the heat treatment significantly increased the number of nodes by 4.92 and the number of stems by 1.42 in the BFM260 cultivar. In conclusion, thermotherapy can help reduce the severity of cassava mosaic disease in mother plants and thereby improve the in vitro growth of meristems.