Journal of

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Brant oak(Quercusbrantii) is one of the most abundant tree species in Zagros forests but there have been scantefforts to its propagation via shoot cuttings approach. Any achievement in its asexual reproduction shall accelerate the breeding improvements. For this purpose, under growing twigs of Brant oak with and without apical bud were cultured in different culture mediums of half MS and WPM adopting in vitro conditions. In order to study of the explants' sterilization, four kinds of sterilizing reagent consist of ethanol, mercury chloride, sodium and calcium hypochlorite with and without Tween as a surfactant in different concentrations were tested and the rate of contamination, phenolic leakage and browning of explants were recorded. The effect of different treatments of ascorbic acid, acetic acid, PVP, activated charcoal and darkness on phenolic leakage and browning of explants were evaluated. The ratio of proliferation and callus formation with different NAA and BAP concentrations were investigated. Finally the rooting vigor of explants by four auxin combinations (control, 0.4 mg L-1 NAA, 0.4 mg L-1 IBA and a mixture of NAA and IBA with amount of 0.1 and 0.3 mg L-1) and three cytokinin concentration (0, 0.4 and 1 mg L-1 ) were assessed. The results revealed that the best suitable condition to establish and proliferate of under growing twigs of Brant oak was sterilizing the explants using mercuric chloride 0.1% (w/v) and transferring to WPM medium containing 0.5 mg L-1 PVP or activated charcoal. Increasing BAP and NAA concentrations up to 1 and 0.1 mg L-1 respectively had no significant effect on proliferation rate of explants. None of the rooting treatments were conducted to root formation in explants.