The genus Passiflora (Passifloraceae) comprises four subgenera
and 520 species distributed in tropical and subtropical regions. Passiflora
alata, commonly known as sweet passion fruit, is native to
Brazil and can also be found in Argentina, Paraguay and Peru. P.
alata is one of the commercially cultivated species of the genus,
being consumed in natura due to its sweet taste. It is also used
worldwide as an ornamental and in folk medicine.
The establishment of tissue culture protocols for P. alata
represents an important action for multiplication, germplasm conservation,
and secondary metabolite production. However, there
are few reports on in vitro culture of this species when compared
to P. edulis f. flavicarpa. Previous studies were undertaken mainly
using explants excised from greenhouse plants, and either achieved
low regeneration efficiencies or did not present quantitative data.
Desai and Mehta (1985) reported the influence of polyamines on
shoot, root and callus production from leaf discs. Rodriguez et al.
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E-mail address: elisabeth.mansur@gmail.com (E. Mansur).
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(2007) obtained shoots from nodal segments cultured on WPM
medium (Lloyd and McCown, 1980) supplemented with 8.8 M
benzyladenine (BA), whereas leaf explants cultured in the same
conditions showed callus formation without shoot development.
On the other hand, Pinto et al. (2010) induced bud production on
MS medium (Murashige and Skoog, 1962) supplemented with BA,
thidiazuron (TDZ), and AgNO3 using leaf segments of greenhouse
plants, and hypocotyls excised from axenic seedlings. Shoot elongation
and plant development only occurred from buds obtained from
hypocotyls explants cultured on MSM medium supplemented with
gibberellic acid (GA3), in flasks with vented lids. Thus, the objective
of this work was to systematically study new strategies for in vitro
culture of P. alata aiming at developing efficient plant production
protocols as well as establishing callogenesis and cell suspension
cultures for further phytochemical and pharmacological studies.