Use of Induced Rooting in Cytological Studies

Abstract

THE common practice for the study of somatic chromosomes is to cut sections or squash the growing root-tips of a seedling. Occasionally successful preparations of somatic chromosomes have also been made from very young leaves and buds, but still in most cases root-tips continue to be favourite material for the study of somatic chromosomes. Seeds of wild plants, however, unlike those of the cultivated ones, are not always easily available, and this accounts at least in part for the fact that chromosome number in members of the former group have either not been determined or, if determined at all, reported from meiotic studies. This is evident from a cursory examination of the “Chromosome Atlas of Flowering Plants”¹. The present work was started to find if these difficulties could be overcome by inducing adventitious root formation in isolated shoots and leaves by means of treatment with various growth-promoting substances.