The lakoocha (Artocarpus lakoocha Roxb.), most popularly known as “monkey jack” or ‘barhal’ and pachoo phanas in local language (bangalore) in India, belonging to family moraceae, originated from South East Asia and is widely distributed in the humid sub-himalayan regions of India. Itis regarded as underutilized fruit, although “lakoocha” is grown mainly in Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Khasi Hills and Western Ghats, because of lack of commercial orchards, lesser consumer preference and poor marketability. Recent commercial interest in several tropical and subtropical underutilized fruits has resulted in an increased cultivation area in Asia and other regions of the developing world due to high level of vitamins and minerals has been recorded in a number of underutilized fruits. The export of fruits from Asia alone has been increasing by a little over 10% annually (Singh, 1993). Most commonly, leaves of these trees serves as green fodder for cattle due to their rich source of crude protein, fibers and mineral (Joshee et al.,2002). These trees grow upto 6 to 12 m tall with large, leathery and deciduous leaves but with fruits of no edible value. Yet the choice of the fruit in Ayurveda and Siddha medicines are due to their multivarious active principles. The medicinal principles that have been well documented in A. lakoocha includes tannins (Doss et al., 2009), flavonoids (Mandalari et al., 2007; Maneechai et al., 2012), saponins (Avato et al., 2006), terpenoids (Funatogawa et al., 2004) and alkaloids (Navarro et al., 1999). Fruit pulp is used as liver tonic and bark extract is used in external ailments like heals boils, cracked skin and pimples (Shailendraet al., 2010). The stem is vermifuge and the stem bark is useful in curing tapeworm infection (Sambhandharaksa et al., 1962, Charoenlarp et al., 1981). A. lakoocha extract is also reported to have cosmetic ingredients (Tengamnuay et al., 2006).

With all these potential uses in pharmaceutical industry, there is a need for commercial orcharding and area expansion for which conventional methods of sexual and vegetative propagation have proved to be futile because of the inherent properties of poor seed viability and low germination percentage and poor response to vegetative means of cutting or grafting techniques (Napier and Robbins, 1989). This prompts for alternative approaches of developing propagules of A. lakoocha in large scale and micropropagation has been a promising tool that has been reported to be fruitful in developing successful plantlets.Where in the conventional propagation methods had been less successful or resulted in complete failure. There are few reports on micropropagation of A. lakoocha using in vitro raised seedlings (Joshee et al., 2002; Rahman and Amin, 1995) and some reports on jackfruits (Artocarpus heterophyllus Lam.) by Abd El-Zaher (2008), Khan et al. (2010), Ashrafuzzaman et al. (2012). We report a rapid and efficient micropro- pagation protocol using nodal explants from 8 years old tree, for producing higher number of plantlets. This prototype system will facilitate commercial production of micropropagated plantletsof A. lakoocha as a source of providing genuine planting material.

1 Result and Analysis

1.1 Shoot bud induction and multiplication

Explants cultured in MS+BAP 13.33+IAA 2.28+GA₃ 0.577 µM recorded early bud induction in about 7.33 days which showed longer axillary shoot (4.567 cm/ explant) and heighest number of leaves (6.667 leaves/explant) (Table 1) than other treatments. However, MS+BAP 13.33+IAA 1.14 µM containing multiplication medium produced 6.667 microshoots/ explant which also showed maximum number of leaves (8.667 leaves/explant) and microshoot length (3.967 cm/explant) (Table 2).

Table 1 Effect of different concentration of plant hormones on in vitro shoot bud induction

Table 2 Effect ofdifferent concentration of cytokinin and auxin ratio on shoot multiplication

1.2 In vitro rooting in regenerated shoots

In vitro rooting was dependent on the strength of the medium and the auxin concentration as evident from Table 3. Among the various strength of media evaluated, IBA, IAA and BAP levels; ½ MS+IBA 8.88+IAA 1.14+BAP 0.89 µM+Activated charcoal 500 mg/L produced 88.16% rooting with heighest number of roots (4.33 roots/explant) over other treat- ments. In MS+IBA 13.33+IAA 1.14+BAP 0.89 µM, regenerated shoots produced longer roots (5.26 cm).

Table 3 Effect of different concentration of auxins and cytokinins on in vitro rooting

Acclimatization of the rooted plantlets was tested in various carrier substrates (Figure 1). A combination of Soil+Sand+Peat moss (1:1:2) supplemented with ½ MS nutrient solution was identified to be ideal substrate for acclimatization, as this treatment resulted in maximum plant survival rate (88.33%), longer plants (6.56 cm) with healthy and green canopy of leaves (8.33 leaves/plant). Although, longer roots (5.96 cm) were found in coconut husk carrier this treatment did not show efficient survival rates. Totally 46 plantlets survived in the greenhouse after one year.

Figure 1 Effect of carrier substrates on acclimatization of micropropagated plantlets

Tengamnuay P., Pengrungruangwong K., Pheansri I., Likhitwitayawuid K., 2006, Artocarpus lakoocha heartwood extract as a novel cosmetic ingredient: Evaluation of the in vitro anti-tyrosinase and in vivo skin whitening activities. Int. J. Cosmetic Sci., 28: 269-276