CLONING PLANTS BY TISSUE CULTURE

by Michael H. Renfroe, Ph.D.


Many plants are cloned by tisssue culture techniques and sold commercially. Some of the ferns such as Boston fern and staghorn fern are propagated through tissue culture. Also, many varieties of African violet are propagated asexually by tissue culture.

We can take a leaf from a plant like the plant below.

The leaf is then cleaned of contaminating microorganisms, fungal spores, small insects or whoever might be on board.


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CLONING PLANTS BY TISSUE CULTURE

by Michael H. Renfroe

Part 2
The leaf is then cut into small pieces in a laminar flow hood that provides a clean working surface. The small pieces of plant tissue that are cut out of the leaf are called explants. Below you can see what they look like.

The explants are then placed on a chemical medium that provides nutrients for the plant tissues to grow and usually some plant hormones to encourage development of new organs from the plant tissue. Below is an explant that has been placed on a chemical medium inside a test tube.

If you look at an explant with a scanning electron microscope, it would look like this.

From this explant, new shoots would start to develop. Before they were obvious to you, as they just started to develop, they would look like this with the scanning electron microscope.


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CLONING PLANTS BY TISSUE CULTURE

by Michael H. Renfroe

Part 3
After six to eight weeks, the explant will develop new shoots, as below.

These shoots may be cut free from the explant, and placed in a larger container on a new medium that will help roots to develop.

The rooted plant can then be transferred to soil. At this stage, the humidity must be kept high until the plant can adjust to the new surroundings. This process of adjustment is called acclimatization, and involves the growth of new leaves that will function in the less humid room air.

The cover is slowly opened more and more over a two week period so that the plant can gradually adjust. Then the cover can be removed completely and you have a new African violet plant.

From one original violet, you may produce hundreds of genetically identical plants.

Because the plants are genetically identical, and are of similar developmental age, they tend to produce flowers at the same time. This is very important to someone who is growing the plants and wants to get them to market just as they start to flower.

Many flowering plants are propagated this way. I hope you enjoyed learning more about how plants may be cloned using tissue culture.
If you want a more detailed explanation, please visit my Getting Started in Tissue Culture web page.
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Go to beginning of Cloning Plants by Tissue Culture.

where can you buy a kit.

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yes i have done this, it works very easy and it took 4 -5 weeks to get roots, HOWEVER, it works great for that "o shit" i wish i had a clone of this plant but its gonna be cut down in 2 -3 weeks situation. it will be the way we all do it in a few years, my child hood friend works for a produce lab and they are doing tissue culture and getting roots in 2 weeks, of course a "lab" is way differant than my grow room, however i'm getting my room close to lab status.

Seems like a long time to wait...
What do you see as the biggest advantage besides getting a lot of clones for a small amount of plant material?

well one advantage would be; you grow that one in a million, only shit, i've been blessed plant, thats perfect for your growing room or climate, its a month or a day away from being chopped down. cut 5 leaves off and in 4-8 weeks you could have 500 babies all the same plant, sounds like the perfect indoor (strain)plant to me...? If i had a special plant that would be perfect for my grow room, it would take me a week or 2 to clone it, then a month or 2 to be able to take about 60-80 clones, but my room will hold 500 plus plants well thats well over 4 months and a chit load of work and time & materials. now i use tissue culture and within 8 weeks i could have well over 500 plants all the same, same everything to the day....makes it nice ....and as my friend says it will be easy to do within 4 weeks max within a year, just something new and interseting....?

Here's a html document on affordable plant tissue culture that can be done at home. To view the document download the .zip file, extract the file, open the file....

This plant tissue culture looks similar to growing psilocybe mushrooms using a liquid culture technique..... To see info on growing shrooms using liquid culture check out http://www.shroomery.org/ ...

If anyone tries the plant tissue culture let me know how it goes.

Attached Files

Plant Tissue cultures.zip (8.7 KB, 20 views)

http://www.percival-scientific.com/p...s.php?cat_id=5

culture kits here. no prices listed, so pretty expensive.

seems to be alot of work and materials. Also needs to be exact or risk complete faliure. Strerilizing to that extent requires a lot of chemicals and clean workspace i.e (lab). But still very interesting

I'm actually a good friend of Bill gram, the creator of tissue kit. Ive done the process in bio lab, completely analogous to bills kit. Bill has a bio history, and is making it available for every body with some level of competence. keep every strain youve ever dealt with in a test tube. for years. he tells me about finding tissue cultures that fell out of his pocket and just proceeded to multiply under his seat. bargain for 200 bucks. His partner mike at hydro solutionz is the inventor of the smart light controller for running double lights on single ballasts. great company

That smart lighting controller seems gimmicky. Is it just me?
Why push ballasts 24/7 when you can buy 10 more cheap (or not so cheap) 1kw ballasts and timers for less than that thing.

Neat idea, but seems as practical as tissue culture is over cloning in most cases.

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