Effect of Soil Type and In Vitro Proliferation Conditions on Acclimation and Growth of Willow Shoots Micropropagated in Continuous Immersion Bioreactors.

Salix viminalis L. is a species with high capacity for micropropagation and acclimation and could therefore be used to evaluate emergent techniques in the field of plant propagation. The aims of this study were to propagate willow in liquid medium with a continuous immersion system, to explore the application of photoautotrophic conditions and to investigate the adaptation of willow plantlets to different soils that could be used as alternatives to commercial peat. For proliferation, we used 3% sucrose or sugar-free medium, and as substrates, we used commercial peat, a soil from an oak forest with high organic matter content and a crop soil with low organic matter content. The effect of sugar supplementation during proliferation and the soil characteristics during acclimation and growth were evaluated on the basis of aerial and root growth and the hydrolytic and dehydrogenase enzymatic activities of the soils. The results indicate that under photoautotrophic conditions, the supplementation of sucrose during micropropagation did not affect the subsequent growth of the plantlets. All plants acclimated without loss, but the type of soil influenced the height and vigor. Plants produced the highest shoots in peat, whereas the most root development occurred in crop soil. Soil enzyme activities were more influenced by the type of soil than by the presence of plants.

Associating wound-related changes in the apoplast proteome of Medicago with early steps in the ROS signal-transduction pathway.

Early wound-related changes in the leaf apoplast proteome of Medicago truncatula have been characterized by 2-DE and MALDI-TOF/TOF and the differential expression of 28/110 extracellular proteins could be reproducibly observed 6 h after wounding. Wounding induced an initial (0-30 min) burst of O2-, followed by a later (3-6 h) production of O2- and H2O2. The infiltration of 5 microM DPI