Development of Micropropagation in Bigleaf Maple (Acer macrophyllum)

Abstract

Natural populations of bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum Pursh) trees contain, at low frequency, individuals with stems that have attractive and valuable wavy grain in the wood. To maintain the genotype of these individuals, vegetative propagation is desired. To enable propagation from the limited amount of plant tissue that is often available, an in vitro micropropagation procedure was developed. A mix of wild trees was used as source material to generate a procedure that is genotype unspecific. Among tested basal media, DKW medium resulted in the highest frequency of growing shoots. For multiplication of shoots, removal of the apex of shoot explants was instrumental, presumably because this treatment broke a strong apical dominance in this species. Of tested hormone and hormone combinations, 0.1 μM thidiazuron produced the best results with an average of 3.2 axillary shoots per explant with an average of 3.7 nodes per axillary shoot after 1 month. Although rooting did not require hormone treatment, a 68% frequency of rooting was obtained on ½ MS supplemented with 1 μM IBA, 27% higher than hormone-free media. Taken together, we have developed a procedure for propagation of bigleaf maple from a limited amount of tissues that can be used to multiply various genotypes of interest.