Pinus. ponderosa (P. Lawson and C. Lawson) is a commercial tree and one of the most important forest species in North America. Ponderosa pine suffers hardship when going through vegetative propagation and, in some cases, 15-30 years are needed to achieve full reproductive capacity. Based on previous works on P. ponderosa regeneration through in vitro organogenesis and trying to improve the published protocols, our objective was to analyze the influence of different types of explants, basal culture media, cytokinins, auxins, and light treatments on the success of shoot multiplication and rooting phases. Whole zygotic embryos and 44 µΜ 6-benzyladenine showed the best results in terms of explants survival. For shoot organogenesis, whole zygotic embryos and half LP (LP medium, Quoirin and Lepoivre, 1977, modified by Aitken-Christie et al., 1988) macronutrients were selected. A significant positive interaction between whole zygotic embryos and half LP macronutrients was found for the percentage of explants forming shoots. Regarding the light treatments applied, a significantly higher percentage of shoots elongated enough to be rooted was detected in shoots growing under blue LED at a light intensity of 61.09 µmol m-2 s-1. However, the acclimatization percentage was higher in shoots previously cultivated under fluorescent light at a light intensity of 61.71 µmol m-2 s-1. Anatomical studies using light microscopy and scanning electron microscopy showed the light treatments promoted differences in anatomical aspects in in vitro shoots; needles of plantlets exposed to red and blue LEDs revealed less stomata compared with needles from plantlets exposed to fluorescent light.
Keywords: LEDs; cytokinins; micropropagation; rooting; scanning electron microscopy; shoot induction.