Thermotherapy of cloves for in-vitro mericlone production for healthy and sustainable management of garlic germplasm

Abstract

Garlic is second most important crop of the genus Allium, known for its traditional medicinal uses. In spite of having medicinal prosperities, it gets infected by several viruses called as garlic viral complex. The garlic viral complex severely affects bulb yield of garlic, due to accumulation of virus load year after year from asexual propagule. Hence we attempted experiment to eliminated garlic viral complex through thermotherapy in combination with meristem culture. The viruses were eliminated from infected garlic bulb with the treatment at 37 ^OC for 90 day could eliminate the Garlic Common Latent Virus, Onion Yellow Dwarf Virus and Allexiviruses. In this study we confounded that the combination of thermotherapy and meristem culture technique protocal have wider prospects for virus elimination in garlic.