Storage of proliferating gooseberry cultures under slow growth conditions

Short storage of in vitro cultures under slow-growth conditions is included in the commercial large-scale micropropagation process. It is dictated by the organizational scheme that provides temporary stop multiplication of shoots for some months. To avoid subculturing to fresh media every 4 weeks, which is obligatory for gooseberry, they can be kept in conditions that protect them from ageing, by slowing down their metabolism. To develop a rational schedule of gooseberry micropropagation, two experiments were used to adopt a temperature and length of time for storage. The best results were obtained with storage conditions at 2 °C for two or four months for proliferating cultures. Under these conditions, the percentage of necrotic shoots was low (< 10%), and shoot proliferation in the subsequent passages was at a level similar to proliferation cultures incubated in the growth room and sub-cultured monthly. The rate of shoots > 1 cm was higher than in the control in the growth room. Storage at 4 °C increased the probability of necrotic shoots up to 80% and decreased the number of all shoots and shoots > 1 cm in subsequent passages.