He carefully dissected out the shoot tips, which consisted of the apical meristem and a leaf primordium, and subsequently cultured them on a chemically defined medium. He was able to produce Caladium bicolor , Xanthosoma sagittifolium , and Colocasia esculenta plants free of dasheen mosaic virus. In 1981, the Agricultural Research Center, Apopka, Florida, released an improved variety of Dieffenbachia maculata cv. These same micropropagation techniques can be used quite effectively to get disease free plants in other species of aroids as well. Just because an aroid is micropropagated does not mean that it is automatically disease free, or somehow immune to diseases.
Micropropagated aroids are no different from any other aroid in their ability to resist diseases.
They may only be considered to be disease free if they have been specifically tested for the pathogen in question. Another very important use of micropropagation is in the conservation of endangered species and rare cultivars. Sara Oldfield indicated in her 1983 Aroideana article that the propagation of rare aroid species can be an important aid to conservation. Micropropagation can serve in this role very well by making it possible to use a single plant as the progenitor of many clones in a relatively short period of time, thereby making the plant more available to collectors. Collecting pressure on wild populations is then reduced as was explained above for Alocasia guttata var.