It's been years since I did this. Per your question, the inositol is a sugar alcohol and is considered part of one of the B-vitamin complexes. Some plants seem to do better with it, but I never used it in the past.

The hardest part of this procedure is generally the regeneration of plants with both roots and leaves from the callus tissue. Most often this requires switching the pieces cut from the callus mass to a different media to initiate the growth of one or the other organ. Then the plants must be grown in sterile media till they are big enough to pot out. Be especially careful to remove all the culture media from the plants when this is done, or mold will kill your plants.

You can find a lot of web pages on these things from a Google search.

Here is a link that might be useful: Tissue culture of banana

Below is a link to a propagation thread on the Gardenweb Botany Forum. It it has several links including one to in vitro propagation of bananas

Here is a link that might be useful: GW's botany forum

Inositol is available from both plant and animal sources. The plant form in which Inositol is available is phytic acid, which can bind with minerals and so affect their absorption negatively.

The body is also able to manufacture Inositol. It is available from wheat germ, brewerÂs yeast, bananas, veal, pork, liver, brown rice, and wheat bran, cantaloupe, oat flakes, nuts, unrefined molasses, raisins and vegetables

Inositol is said to promote healthy hair, hair growth, and helps in controlling estrogen levels and may assist in preventing breast lumps. Inositol is a vitamin that is utilized by the body for a variety of metabolic processes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Inositol

I was just curious how your micropropagation was going? I want to try african violets and hostas at home. I did african violets and ferns 20 years ago in college but that was under pretty stringent lab conditions. Seems like we used some sugar in our agar mixture perhaps the coconut milk provided the sucrose for the cultures?

How was your micropropagation experiment?

How the micropropagation lab looked like 20 years ago? I am curious that there is laminated flow hood at that time or not? or it just using a chamber like a fishing tank and spray alcohol to sterile like people work with homemade tissue culture today?

Back when I took the course about 1966-68 or so, we had laminated flow hoods, even in student labs.

I don't recall how we cleaned and sterilized the inside the hood, perhaps someone was paid to do that as part of their financial aid package.

We used glassware for the most part rather than disposable plastic. We had to wash our own glassware. Started with ordinary dish soap. After a casual rinse we would do a second wash with a solution of "Tween 80", I think that is now called something else. Then several distilled water rinses and dry in an oven or dry by rinsing with alcohol and then acetone then ether.

The plant cuttings to be used were sterilized with a variety of things. Often this was part of the student challenge to find some way to sterilize the plant. Often the professor or graduate assistant would have some variation to be tested by the student so often we didn't know exactly what we were using.

Hi Albert_135,
Thank you for information. It's very interesting to see how people worked with tissue culture in the past. Are you still working with TC now? Anybody know how people are sterilizing equipments and explants in the TC labs now? Are sterilize procedures now quite different than in the past?

Hi..
I am presently facing some problems regarding multiplication in Gloriosa superba through nodal explants.
Various concentrations, both high and low were tried but failed to produce results.
If anybody has any idea regarding generation of multiple shoots , plz write or suggest to me..