IN VITRO SHOOT MULTIPLICATION OF STEVIA REBAUDIANA (BERT) THROUGH PLANT TISSUE CULTURE.

Stevioside obtained from the leaves of Stevia rebaudiana (Bert) is regarded as a valuable natural sweetening agent because of its relatively good taste and chemical stability. But Seed germination of the plant is poor. Due to low viability of seeds, present experiment attempts to study the effect of various basal salts and phytohormones on various aspects of shoot multiplication through in vitro technique. Various concentrations and combinations of BAP and NAA were used in MS medium and WPM medium and observed for the morphogenic responses of explants of Stevia rebaudiana (Bert). During the experiments it was observed that combination of WPM was the best performer in comparison with MS medium. It gave better growth in terms of number of shoots, length of shoots, number of internodes, multiplication rate and callus induction.