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Whitehall Montana

Have you ever used or come across studys on Plant Tissue Cultures.I assume only that this is cloning a plant from another plants tissue making it an exact duplicate.This could be used to pick and choose which plants genetics that you want to grow and duplicate it exactly as long as you have some live tissue to work with

11/9/2014 5:06:38 PM

Whitehall Montana

Me again,I guess what I am saying is micropropagation.From what I have read,you can take a piece of the plant and reduplicate the exact plant even using a seed.So you can replicate say the 2009 as many times as you want and have many more 2009 seeds.I thank you in advance.

11/9/2014 7:06:55 PM

Alaska

Yep. Virus indexing and all that good stuff. If it's vine type you are looking for then I'd say yes. But fruit type imho would be very different from each clone. It would take many generations of inbreeding/line breeding before any real homogeneity is achieved.

11/9/2014 8:39:03 PM

Springfield, Missouri

Hey Slim, I have been working with this for several years there might be pictures in my diary, if not I'll try to upload some. Every species of plant behaves differently when it comes to micropropagation. I have had success with AGs, but the callus doesn't keep as long as you might think. You can think of callus as being both stem cells, and a cancerous tissue. You can produce as many plants from callus as you can manage, however the callus is only good for a certain period of time before the genome starts to become unstable. The genome destabilizes because the cells divide very quickly, and it is difficult for the enzymes involved in DNA maintenance to keep up. The best bet for keeping a cell line alive is through clonal material (like what Matt does in the greenhouses).

Now tissue culture is a viable tool if your cell line gets a virus that can't be killed with heat.

I think the most viable uses for tissue culture are propagating transformed tissue (GMOs), or producing haploid plantlets. My research focuses on growing pollen into callus, and then into plants. The result is a plant with half the genetic material(haploid). If you treat the haploid plantlets with colchicine then it is possible to double the genetic material resulting in a double haploid. A double haploid is the equivalent of a seed that has been selfed for 9 or more generations, it has ZERO genetic diversity (all traits are homozygous). This is a good tool to remove bad traits like poor seed counts, thin walls, ect. very quickly. To reestablish genetic diversity you simply cross it with a different line. Email me if you would like me to send you papers on this topic, there are lots.

11/10/2014 12:12:50 PM

Whitehall Montana

Wow Logan,there seems to be a lot more to this then what I read up on.They seem to make everything a little easier on the sites I studied.I really appreciate all the input here from everyone.

11/10/2014 1:24:49 PM

Alaska

Very interesting stuff Logan, thanks.

11/10/2014 3:30:28 PM

Connecticut

Hi Slim-

First let me apologize for the delay in my reply, I am not able to check all the message boards as often as I would like and I just saw your post now (2-weeks late). Anyway I wanted to let you know that I have experimented with this and posted it in my 2010 diary look at the Feb. 21 to March 10 entries. I was able to show some other growers my Test Tube 1385 Jutras clones to prove it is possible.

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2010&grower=25411&action=L

In short this would be the "best" way to mass produce genetic clones (replicates) of the same plant. However, waiting until the end of the season (when we know what the plant actually produces) presents a challenge with internal contamination and as a result it is very difficult to get "clean" plant-lets.

As a result I have gone more with the standard cloning/vegetative propagation as the success rate has been higher. If you look at the end of my 2011 diary (Nov. 1st entries) you will see some offspring's of my standard cloning /veg propagation method.

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/Diary/DiaryView.asp?season=2011&grower=25411&action=L

Any other questions let me know and hopefully the information was worth the wait.

11/24/2014 10:39:49 PM

Whitehall Montana

Matt Thank you for your time.I will go to your diary and check it out.Thanks again. Bill

11/24/2014 10:47:24 PM