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An experiment was conducted in order to investigate the effects of exogenous polyamines (PAs) on the development of mycorrhizae in roots, nutrient uptake and vegetative and reproductive growth of Freesia hybrida 'Golden Wave'. Corms of freesia were inoculated with Rhizophagus intraradices at sowing time and treated once a week by one of three PAs, putrescine (Put), spermidine or spermine, in concentrations of 0.05 and 0.1 mM each as foliar application or soil drench. Application of PAs, especially as soil drench, increased mycorrhizal colonization as well as the growth and development of inoculated plants. Among the three PAs, Put in 0.1 mM concentration was the most effective in increasing colonization, enhancing floral stem length and diameter, floral spike length, floret number on main and lateral spikes and increasing corm and cormlet weight, corm diameter and cormlet number. Sole application of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi had no significant effect on the flowering time but soil drench with 0.1 mM Put accelerated flowering by about 17 days. Application of PAs elevated leaves N, P, K, Mg, Fe and Zn and corms' P, K, Ca, Fe and Zn concentration of inoculated plants. Our results suggest that soil drench application of PAs, especially Put, positively influenced mycorrhizal inoculation and nutrient uptake, which leads to improving growth, flower and corm production and quality of mycorrhizal plants of freesia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An investigation was conducted to study the effects of explant sources, plant growth regulators, carbohydrates and light conditions on indirect cormlet regeneration and the induction of embryogenic callus of freesia ( Freesia × hybrida Bailey 'Argenta'). Sections of two different types of explants, corms and pupae (cold storage-produced corms), were placed on Murashige and Skoog (MS) media containing different concentrations of plant growth regulators. The results showed that the highest percentage of callus induction (100%), the highest callus growth (15 mm diameter) and the best type of calli were achieved for pupa explants grown on the medium that contained 4 mg L−1 1-naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA) and 2 mg L−1 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) in the dark. Increasing BAP up to 3 to 4.5 mg L−1 resulted in the maximum number of regenerated cormlets from 1 cm2 calli (2 cormlets) under light conditions. Overall, the best rooting of regenerated cormlets was achieved on MS media supplemented with 1 mg L−1 indole-3-butyric acid (IBA). In the next stage, high quality calli were subcultured on MS media containing sorbitol, sucrose, maltose and mannitol (0, 5, 10 and 15 g L−1). The results indicated that 15 g L−1 maltose was able to induce the highest percentage of embryogenic callus, with an average of 88.9% on media containing 2 mg L−1 BAP and 1 mg L−1 NAA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]