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Introduction to Snapdragon Plants

Snapdragon is the most popular flowering plant in indoor decorations, house gardens, and the floral industry. They are extensively used to make mixed border gardens, flower boxes, and patio containers

It’s scientifically known as Antirrhinum—a genus of 20 species. It belongs to the family of Scrophulariaceae. The name Antirrhinum means “like a snout” because of the resemblance of its flowers to a calf or dragon's nose.

Snapdragons are native to western North America and the western Mediterranean region. They are mostly short-lived and perennial, however, some are also annual plants. Its leaves are symmetrical, alternate, and lance-shaped.

The flowers of the plant are tubular and bilaterally symmetrical. The flowers are usually large with a closed liplike mouth and range in colors from white, yellow, red, pink, and orange, to lavender. The specific characteristics prevent most insects. However, during pollination, the bees force open the flowers to pollinate.

The Snapdragon flowers (almost every hue) bloom abundantly throughout the cooler months and make an excellent addition to a spring or fall garden. They start blooming from the bottom of the stalk and slowly move up, flowering for a long time.

This article provides an overview of approaches to growing Snapdragon and tissue culture procedures to introduce the plant in vitro.

Growing Snapdragons

Snapdragons range in different sizes, starting from a few inches tall to 4 feet. They are generally propagated using seeds, which take 2-3 months to germinate. They do excellent in well-draining soil in a sunny location and partial shade. Further, the soil pH between 6.2 and 7.0 suits best for the plant.

The limitation of the traditional techniques of growing plants is the slow growth rate. And, a huge number of mother plants or seeds are required to grow these plants on a commercial scale, which also needs a large space.

These limitations of conventional techniques can be overcome by using advanced technologies, such as tissue culture.

Tissue culture only requires a single cell or a few tissues of the plant to regenerate whole plants. It uses the totipotent property of the plant's cells, which means all plant cells have the ability to divide and form any cells of the plants.

Tissue Culture Procedure For Snapdragon

Tissue culture is one of the most preferred techniques for commercial growers. It offers multiple advantages, such as:

• Requirement of less space
• No use of a huge number of mother plants
• Conserve genetics of the particular variety of the plant
• Produce plants in a short time on a large scale
• Produce hybrid plants
• Produce disease-free plants

The mentioned procedure is taken from the study of M. Elena Gonzalez-Benito, J. Tapia, Nieves Rodriguez & J. M. Iriondo (1996). Micropropagation of commercial and wild genotypes of snapdragon (Antirrhinum spp.), Journal of Horticultural Science, 71:1, 11-15, DOI: 10.1080/14620316.1996.11515377

Preparing Mother Plant

• Collect seeds from their natural environment.
• Disinfect all seeds with 0.5% (w/v) NaOCl, with two drops of Tween 20 per 100 ml, and continue stirring for 30 minutes.
• Rinse all seeds thrice with sterile distilled water.
• Culture seeds in test tubes on MS semi-solid basal medium.
• Incubate seeds at 15°C with a 16 h day/8 h night photoperiod.
• After 20-30 days you will have germinated seeds in test tubes.
• Transfer seeds to 25°C under lights delivering 40 umol.m- 2.s- 1 in 16 h photoperiods.

Collecting Explant From The Mother Plant And Shoot Induction

• Collect nodal explants and culture them on MS + 5 uM BAP.
• In the interval of four weeks, the plant can be subcultured for multiplication.

Rooting and Acclimation

• Take shoots of the regenerated plants and transfer them to MS + 0.5 um NAA.
• After rooting, wash plant roots with tap water and immerse them in a 3 g/l solution of Captosan (8% carbendazim + 40% captan) for a few seconds.
• Transfer the plants to pots with an autoclaved 3-peat: 1 vermiculite (by volume) mixture.
• Keep potted plants in a fully enclosed propagator with transparent lids.
• After 6 days, open the windows of the propagators for increasing periods of time each day for 15 days.
• After 15 days, totally remove the transparent lid.

HOW DOES PLANT CELL TECHNOLOGY HELP YOU TO ACHIEVE YOUR TISSUE CULTURE GOALS?

Plant Cell Technology is helping tissue culturists worldwide by providing unique and world-class products and services that smoothen their process. The PCT Store has MS media, agar, gellan gum, Plant Preservative Mixture (PPM™), culture vessels, Biocoupler™, and masks in its store to facilitate your processes.

And, that’s not it! Plant Cell Technology also offers consultation services to culturists of all sizes that help to get instant solutions to your tissue culture problems.

You can either book a one-on-one consultation call or a physical visit to your lab. We help you at every step of the tissue culture process, ranging from establishing a tissue culture lab to preventing contamination problems or any specific challenges in your process.

Further, in the coming month, we are conducting a range of Master Classes for tissue culture enthusiasts like you. The class offers you the great opportunity to directly learn from the experts in the area, who have 10-30+ years of experience.

So, visit plantcelltechnology.com today and learn more about our products and services and how they help you excel in your tissue culture processes.

Happy Culturing!