Protocol Optimization and Mass Propagation of Virus Free Sweet Potato[Ipomoea Batatas L. (Lam) to Enhance production in Southern, Ethiopia

Abstract

Sweet potato is one of the most produced and utilized root crops in the world. It is the second most cultivated root crops in southern part of Ethiopia next to enset(CSA, 2016/17). Its productivity nowadays is hardly decreased due to sweet potato virus disease which is transmitted and distributed through infected plantlets and low quality planting materials. Plant tissue culture through meristem shoot tip culture followed by virus indexing and mass propagation is a crucial technique to get healthy planting materials and hence restore the production and productivity. The experiment was designed to get in vitro shootlets and test to confirm the efficiency of the technique in cleaning the virus from plants. Explants from two varieties  kulfo and beletsech were used as experimental materials and NCM-ELISA package protocol was used to test regenerated plants for virus elimination. The result of plantlets regeneration showed that 77% and 70% of kulfo and beletsech explants were initiated as contamination free where as 6 and 5.3 nod numbers were recorded for kulfo and beletsech plantlets in MS media supplied with 1mg/l BAP media. In NCM-ELISA test 98.5% of plantlets were found to be virus free and 1.5 % were suspected for SFMV virus from 96 sample plants tested.

Keywords: Sweetpotato, Virus, explants, ELISA