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In vitro culture and cryopreservation of red and white currants

Cryopreservation of red and white curran

The aim of this project is to find suitable cryopreservation method for several red currant varieties. The testing of the cryopreservation methods for red and white currants has only been made in very small scale until now, and this is an obligatory next step in order to continue the long-term cryopreservation of the mandate variety collections with red and white currants.

The plant materials for this study, red currant (Ribes Rubrum group) cultivars ’Punainen hollantilainen’, Katri’ and ‘Punahilkka’ have been included to the on-going in vitro culture study at Luke, so that the in vitro cultures and also some data about the in vitro growth media suitable for those cultivars are available and the cultures can be multiplied for this project to study the cryopreservation on these cultivars. ‘Punainen Hollantilainen’ is a synonyme to ‘Red Dutch’, ‘Prinz Albert’ and ‘Rotes Wunder’ so although an old European variety, it also is a Finnish mandate list cultivar and can be treated as some kind of international standard among the more local cultivars. ‘Katri’ (or ‘Rotes Wunder Katri’) is also synonyme to ‘Red Dutch’, ‘Prinz Albert’ and ‘Punainen hollantilainen’, it is a strain selected in Finland with high vitamin C content. ‘Punahilkka’ however is a Finnish variety.
White currant cultivar ‘Lepaan Valkea’ (Ribes Rubrum group) is also included in the on-going in vitro culture study at Luke and has shown to be easy to multiply on several growth media types and this can be an easy cultivar, to try the cryopreservation with it.

The droplet-vitrification cryopreservation method has been successfully applied at Luke for long-term cryopreservation of in vitro grown shoot tips of black currants, but some modifications will need to be tested for success with red and white currants. One general variable to be tested is the duration of the plant vitrification solution 2 pretreatment. The in vitro growth media before shoot tip eradication, the sugar pretreatment before freezing and the growth media during regrowth are also important factors affecting the cryopreservation and may need to be tested. For these tests fresh in vitro grown shoot tips can be grown and cold acclimated or materials already frozen into the cryotank ( either in vitro -grown or dormant bud materials) can be used for testing the regrowth media after cryopreservation.