Topic:

Hydroponics: A Sustainable Tool for Regenerating Preferred Sex and Producing a Typical Dioecious Plant, Telfairia Occidentalis (Linn)

Abstract: 

Telfairia occidentalisis a highly cherished leaf and seed vegetable. It is propagatedmainly by seed. The seed is recalcitrant and dioecious with often equal proportion offemale to male ratios of seed in the fruit. The female component produces bettereconomic yield while the edible yield of the male is short-lived and overtaken byprofuse flowering. There is therefore the need to access a sustainable technology forthe regeneration of clonal propagules from the stem, to regulate the proportion ofsex in favour of the female for plant in the field for higher economic returnthan thecurrent. Attempt to achieve this through tissue culture has met with promisingsuccess, but is not sustainable. Also, efforts to produce the stem clones underconventional system was also successful but at a very low rate, less than 50 percent.Hydroponic culture promises to provide a wide range of alternative systems that canenhance the rooting of Telfairia stems where water, rooting hormone and nutrientapplications are regulated with a lot of flexibilities, as well as the provision ofhumidityunder sterile condition. Some sustainable hydroponic systems, such as Dripand Sandponicsfor rooting cuttings,have been identified