Dracocephalum charkeviczii Prob. in vitro

We established sterile clones of a medicinal plant dragonhead Dracocephalum charkeviczii Prob. (Lamiaceae). We used shoots of the plants from natural habitat, notably leaf nodes with axillary bud, as explants, sterilized the explants in 0.1 % Diocide for 4 minutes and cultivated them on agarized nutrient half-strength MS medium with vitamins, 2 % sucrose, 0.4 % agar, 1 mg/l indolylbutyric acid (IBA), or 0.5 or 1.0 mg/l 6-benzyladenine (BA). Medium pH was 4.6 or 5.4. We took hormonefree half-salt MS medium as a control. We observed the maximum propagation coefficient equal to 9.4 in microplants cultivated on the medium with 1 mg/l BA. Application of hormone-free MS medium can be recommended for D. charkeviczii propagation due to its simplicity. The use of the medium protocol with 1 mg/l BA on the first step and with IBA on the second step will allow rapid multiplication and establishment of full-fledged plants of D. charkeviczii for different purposes such as restoration of natural populations, source of valuable metabolites, landscaping, etc.