Abstract

Berry fruits are a rich source for human nutrition and play a major role for the livelihood of small producers. Among hybrid blackberries, the cultivar ‘Chester’ has good fruit quality but traditional propagation methods show limiations. The advantages of micropropagation exploited by the breeding industry in many plant species need to be developed for the cultivar ‘Chester’. This work aimed to find better conditions in the stages of in vitro establishment, shoot proliferation and rooting for the micropropagation of this cultivar. Plant material was collected at different developmental stages. Experiments evaluated sterilization procedures, shoot multiplication, elongation, rooting and acclimation. Actively growing new shoots taken in spring time allowed to obtain in vitro culture establishment of axenic tissues. Shoot multiplication rate was highest (5.2) on MS medium. The media had a stark incluence on rooting with a higher proportion of rooted shoots on WPM and DKW. The highest number of roots per shoot (5.4) and higher root length were observed on WPM. The results stress the importance of evaluating different culture media for specific cultivars under micropropagation. The protocol described permits the micropropagation of blackberry cv. ‘Chester’, opening a new alternative for plant production in the difficult propagation of this cultivar.