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How We Tissue Culture |
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| STEP 1 This step is called Initiation, or Stage I. The method used to clone plants in tissue culture is similar to taking softwood cuttings from a parent plant. First, the parent plant is chosen based on desirable characteristics, e.g. fruit, hardiness, size, and so on. Buds, leaf and stem, or root material are then collected. The harvested plant material is then ‘cleaned’ using sterile water and bleach, alcohol, or other strong cleaners. Then they are transferred in a LAF or laminar flow hood that forces sterile air over the transfer area. This is necessary in order to prevent bacteria or fungi from contaminating plants when they are in-vitro, or in tissue culture. Bacteria and fungi grow much faster in vitro and quickly take over any plants trying to grow. | |
| STEP 2 This step is called Multiplication, or Stage II. Cleaned plant pieces are placed in sterile containers or ‘jars’ that contain a media with all the ingredients a plant needs to grow. The media is made up of nutrients, plant hormones (cytokines & auxins), an energy source such as sugar, water, and a thickener to make the media gel. Most plants prefer to be part way out of the media, and the gelled media feeds the plant cultures while also supporting them. The plant hormones tell the plant cells what kind of growth they need produce. At this stage, we want the plants to produce many leafy shoots on a clump of cells we call base or callus tissue. These ‘bases’ are divided every time they are transferred. Plant cultures need to be transferred in a sterile manner regularly as they use up what they need in the media within 2-4 weeks. This is when tissue culture becomes truly amazing. Imagine you only have one tree, and in one year, you could have thousands! As plants grow quickly in vitro, they are divided each time they are transferred from one jar to the next three jars until 1plant=3 plants=9 plants =27 plants =81 plants =243 plants=729 plants =2187 plants, and on until you have as many shoots as you need. | |
| STEP 3 Step 3 is Stage III or Elongation phase. Base cultures are sterile transferred in the laminar flow hood again, but this time onto a media that makes the shoots elongate (get taller). From this stage, shoots can be planted directly into a high mist or fog Greenhouse, like regular softwood cuttings, or they can be sterile transferred again onto Stage IV or Pre-Rooting Media. | |
| STEP 4 On Stage IV or Pre-Rooting media, shoots are trimmed off the base tissue and placed into a media that contains auxins (rooting hormones). Shoots that begin to grow roots in-vitro are then planted in the greenhouse. This method is often used for more difficult to root plants, such as saskatoons. | |
| Micro-Propagation can be a very difficult, and also a very rewarding way to produce plants for our customers. It is far easier and more lucrative to propagate seedlings, but in the 30 years of growing and maintaining a commercial prairie orchard, and the 12+years of growing our plants from tissue culture, there is simply no comparison in plant quality that we can provide for our customers and for our own orchards. Our Canadian prairie fruit industry is juvenile by world standards, and this is a very exciting time to be involved in the fruit industry here. Care must be taken not to compromise the standards to produce excellent fruit for our burgeoning fruit economy. This is another area where an ounce of prevention & consideration will save us years in our effort to compete locally, and on a global scale. | |
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