OPTIMIZING THE ACCLIMATIZATION PROCESS OF OIL PALM (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) in vitro PLANTLETS DERIVED FROM THE MATURE ZYGOTIC EMBRYOS

Oil palm has become one of the most important industrial crops for its uses in various purposes, but due to its constraints in conventional propagation, in vitro regeneration has become a vital route for accelerating the breeding programs. But its poor survival rate during hardening phase was making devastating loss to the industry. Hence in this study we have optimized the acclimatization process for in vitro germinated 90 days old plantlets from mature zygotic embryos. Plantlets were acclimatized using eight soil less media and their combinations in 1:1:1 ratio, viz. HM1 (Vermiculite), HM2 (Cocopeat), HM3 (Perlite), HM4 (Vermiculite + Cocopeat + Soilrite), HM5 (Vermiculite + Perlite + Soilrite), HM6 (Cocopeat + Perlite + Soilrite) HM7 (Cocopeat + Vermiculite + Perlite) and HM8 (Compost). After 60 days of growth in the soilless media, plantlets grown in the HM4 showed better results in terms of plant morphological characters like shoot length, root length, number of leaves, leaf length and leaf width among all the treatments tried. But no statistical significance observed except in root growth. However, transplantation shock was drastically reduced by the adopting phased transfer to the transition environment.