The Slow Growth Conservation of Moringa peregrina (Forssk.) Fiori microshsoots and its Effect on Total Phenolic Compounds

Abstract

Moringa peregrina (Forssk.) Fiori is a wild threatened medicinal tree found in sites near the Dead Sea in Jordan. The effect of slow growth conservation experiments on microshoot content of phenolic compounds after storage was investigated. Slow growth storage was performed by adding various sugar types (sucrose, sorbitol, and mannitol) at various levels (0.1, 0.2, 0.3, and 0.4 M) to the Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium, or using abscisic acid (ABA) at different rates (3.8, 7.6, and 11.4µM) to slow down the growth rate of the microshoots. The obtained data revealed that the slow growth conservation of M. peregrina, microshoots was most successful when MS medium was supplemented with 0.1 M sorbitol. This is because it was able to reduce the shoot height and rooting percentage, and to maintain recovery at full rate after storage compared to the other slow growth treatments. Furthermore, the obtained results revealed that the wild collected shoots of M. peregrina had maximum phenolic compound content 21.06 GAE (mg/g of dry mass) compared to the other in vitro preserved plants. Moreover, samples pre-stored in 0.1M sorbitol had the highest phenolic compounds content 3.36 GAE compared to the rest of the in vitro pre-stored samples.