Abstract

Production of potato is constrained by lack of disease-free planting materials. This can be circumvented through tissue culture but the technology is costly limiting its adoption. As composition of culture medium used for shoot regeneration has a great influence on cost and there is a potential for use of locally available low cost resources as alternatives to the conventional costly laboratory resources. There is therefore, need to put in place interventions that will reduce the cost of production hence, making tissue culture products affordable. The present study describes a highly cost effective in vitro mass multiplication protocol for potato. The developed low cost medium can be used to boost the production of affordable disease-free potato seedlings, besides, this practice could be helpful in achieving more than 95% reduction in media cost.

Key words: Potato, micropropagation, low cost, medium, carbon source, tap water, plantlets.