Effect of sodium hypochlorite on control of in vitro contamination and seed germination of Ficus religiosa Mohsen Hesami1*, Mohammad Hossein Daneshvar1 and Amin Lotfi-Jalalabadi2

Ficus religiosa has great mythological, religious, and medicinal importance in the culture of India and Nepal since times immemorial. The present paper was done to evaluate the potential of sodium hypochlorite in controlling the contamination of F. religiosa micro-propagation and seed germination of F. religiosa. In this study, a factorial experiment based on a completely randomized design with 18 treatments including six different sodium hypochlorite concentrations (0, 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 %) and three soaking time of explants (5, 10 and, 15 min) with three replications was conducted. The seeds were inoculated on one-tenth strength of MS (Murashige and Skoog, 1962) medium. The lowest rate of contamination (0%) was obtained in treatments containing 20% Sodium hypochlorite at 10 and 15 min immersion and 25% Sodium hypochlorite at 5, 10 and 15 min immersion. The highest seed germination (63.33%) was observed in treatments including 10% Sodium hypochlorite at 5 and 10 min immersion.