FEATURES OF IN VITRO CULTIVATION OF ASTRAGALUS DASYANTHUS PALL PLANTS

The research is devoted to the study of the peculiarities of in vitro cultivation of the medicinal plant Astragalus dasyanthus Pall, which is listed in the Red Book of Ukraine and has the status of an endangered species. The cultivation of woolly-flowered astragalus in Ukraine is currently difficult due to the inaccessibility of the raw material base in the temporarily occupied southern part of Ukraine, as well as due to the low seed productivity of the crop. The use of in vitro plant tissue cultivation methods to restore natural communities of A. dasyanthus and expand possible sources of raw materials for the synthesis of medicinal substances is promising. In this work, we investigated the conditions for obtaining aseptic Astragalus dasyanthus plants from seeds and evaluated the effect of preliminary mechanical scarification on its germination energy, taking into account the percentage of sterile seedlings obtained. In addition, the efficiency of microclonal propagation of A. dasyanthus was determined depending on the composition of the culture medium, in particular the concentration of macronutrients and the presence and concentration of growth regulators. It has been shown that aseptic plants of Astragalus dasyanthus can be obtained by surface sterilization of seeds that have been previously subjected to mechanical scarification or by germination on Murashige and Skoog nutrient medium with the addition of 0.1 mg/l benzylaminopurine. It was determined that the type and concentration of cytokinin affects the efficiency of microclonal propagation of A. dasyanthus plants, while halving the content of macronutrients in the nutrient medium does not significantly affect this item. It was found that the addition of benzylaminopurine to the culture medium stimulates the formation of more additional shoots of A. dasyanthus in vitro compared to the culture medium containing kinetin. Thus, Murashige and Skoog medium with the addition of 0.5 mg/l of benzylaminopurine is optimal for in vitro cultivation of woolly-flowered Astragalus plants.