Background : Panax ginseng the king of Oriental medicines, has enormous potential against many of the disease symptoms and ailments. Panax quinquefolius is an another important member of Panax family which has similar benefits and medicinal properties. Both the species contains ginsenosides a pharmacologically active component abundant in their roots. In an effort to establish the new ginseng cultivars with improved agronomical characters such as root shape, stress tolerant and higher ginsenoside contents, the reciprocal interspecific hybrids were generated Methods and Results : Four elite cultivars and two new lines of ginseng were chosen to produce interspecies reciprocal hybrids with P. quinquefolius, by pollen dusting on the emasculated flowers. Among the F1 populations, the reciprocal hybrids generated by using new line 0837 both as maternal and paternal parent showed better properties and hybrid vigor. They showed strong root phenotypes with many lateral and fine roots thus having 10% to 20% higher ginsenoside contents compared to the parental populations. Among the major ginsenosides, the pharmacologically active ginsenosides such as Re, Rb1, Rb2 and F1 were enriched and accounted for the 70% of the PPD ginsenosides in 0837/Pq and Pq/0837 crosses, displaying strong dominance. Conclusion : Thus, based on our result we could conclude that P. ginseng line 0837 is the superior variety compared to the already existing lines for performing the interspecific hybrids with promising outcome in their root quality and ginsenoside content.

Background : Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) is a multipurpose small tree with unique berries of high nutritional and pharmaceutical values has wide spread distribution from Eurasia to South east Asia. In recent times the medicinal benefits of vitamin tree are inclining, hence, efforts were taken to propagate them in vitro to exploit their medicinal property. Methods and Results : The tissue culture potential of them was investigated for the ability to induce shoot organogenesis in leaf explant, and induction of direct somatic embryogenesis from leaf tissue. Moreover, we also determined the effective induction medium for callus and somatic embryo production from H. rhamnoides. To induce the callus form leaf tissue, several phytohormone combinations such as α-naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and 6-benzyladenine (BA), 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) and 6-benzyladenine (BA), and Kinetin (K) were tried with the Murashige and Skoog (MS) as well as woody plant medium (WPM). In MS basal medium, the combination of 2,4-D and K showed the best callus induction rate of 71%, whereas in WPM basal medium the combination of NAA and BA showed the best callus induction rate of 91%. The adventitious root induction form callus was also attempted by using MS and B5 medium with the phytohormone combinations of IBA 1 – 5 g/ℓ. In MS medium, root was induced only at 4 g/ℓ of IBA and 64%, 51% and 55% root induction results were obtained at 3 g/ℓ, 4 g/ℓ and 5 g/ℓ in B5 basal medium, respectively. The somatic embryos were induced only in half strength MS with the triple phytohormone ratio of 2:1:2 of NAA, BA, and K. Conclusion : The in vitro propagation of sea buckthorn was successfully employed by generating callus, adventitious roots as well as the induction of somatic embryos form the leaf tissues derived callus. Our results provided a valuable addition to the utilization of H. rhamnoides thus enabling their propagation.