51st state

following on from the Ensete Perrieri thread... Is there sufficient demand from .org members to jointly put some of the more unusual species into TC?

I seem to remember a number did this with Siam Ruby a while back. maybe we could create 'wishlists' and see what level of demand is out there.
I know that there are specialists out there doing this but it would be a great way for .org to spread some species out more widely across the globe.
any thoughts?

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Gabe15

Iʻm working on it right now, I have a whole setup in my house ready to go, Iʻm just waiting for my media to come in and hopefully I can start producing some. I already have much of my collection in Hawaii in TC already (including some very unusual species, and many plants not yet available on the market), when I get back there I plan to start selling plants by January hopefully.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Chironex

Kev, I couldn't agree more. I am reading up on TC technique and will be able to do it in a few months or less. I was discussing this with Gabe too. It will definitely help the banana world and I want to be part of that.
Once I get set-up to where I know what I am doing, I will be offering this service to our membership. I am not sure just yet, but I think that taking the tissue from the explant can be done without causing too much injury. From what I have read, tissue is taken from the meristem, which is either growing root tips or in shoots. So, it shouldn't be that invasive as to cause unrecoverable injury to the source plant (explant).
Just need to get a comfort level on my own stock first. Then Dr Frankenstein will be ready to party!!!!

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Scot

AltadenaGarden

Would anyone like to post a good link about tissue culture for bananas. I am not looking to do it but am interested in how it works.

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chong

Here's one from one of our members, kgbenson:
Micropropagation of Musa

Richard

It turns out that different generas of plants require different kinds of tissue culture. In other words, some plants are more troublesome than others. Here's a paper I came across while researching the origins of some pineapple guava varieties:

ScienceDirect - Scientia Horticulturae : Improvements in somatic embryogenesis protocol in Feijoa (Acca sellowiana (Berg) Burret): Induction, conversion and synthetic seeds

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Mark Hall

Chong, Thanks for the link. Very interesting reading. I did think there would be more pictures after the meristem was removed showing various stages of growth.

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damaclese

Gabe Scot and i are looking for a Banana called Mysor its appears to be vary drought and heat tolerant if we got one do you think any one on the org would be interested in Tc of them?

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Chironex

Pauly, I forgot to mention to you that I have made arrangements for 2 Mysore and have another contact for more if needed. PM me with your address if you want and I can have them sent to you before I get there.

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Scot

Richard

I have heard from other Musa (fruiting) growers and read a few articles indicating that Tc of Musa usually produces a new cultivar of the plant and less often a plant that is completely true to form of the parent. What are your experiences with this?

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Chironex

I am not an expert yet, but this contradicts what I have read. The clone produced through micropropagation is an identical copy of the parent (as are all other plantlets multiplied from the same explant.) The only possible way that this can be deviated is through contamination or mutagens deliberately applied to the culture.

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Scot

Gabe15

Mysore is a very common banana, it shouldnʻt be too hard to find. Going Bananas has them. Other common names for it is Pisang Ceylon and Misi Luki, different accessions may vary slightly but they are all the same basic cultivar. If theres that much interest in it, I could look into TCʻn it later on.

This is not true, though there is some truth in it. Bananas can and do indeed mutate during micropropagation, however precautions can be taken to lower the rate of mutation. In the field, bananas mutate naturally, this is the reason we have so many cultivars and different varieties in the same groups. In micropropagation, you are generally dealing with many plants at a time (I produce about 300-400 explants in 3hrs, you can see it adds up), and forcing them to grow and proliferate rather quickly. Usually, in a very small number of your explants, there is some mutation. To reduce this, in our lab, we will only subculture a plant 5 times after initiation (this results in about 4,000 explants per original plant). If we run out of explants for that variety, and have tissue subcultured all of the lines 5 times, we will then go collect a new plant from the field, preferably one that was not grown from tissue culture or if not available, has been in the ground for at least 2 years. If a lab continues to reuse the same material over and over, eventually the mutation rate would be unreasonably high and you will see many "off-types". Some mutations can be beneficial (such as dwarfing or increased yield), but most often they are not. Even with these precautions, from time to time a farmer will find an off-type in their field, but tissue culture still has many advantages over traditional propagation.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

Richard

Thanks Gabe for that excellent clarification.

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D_&_T

Here is a link another member posted a while back.

Kitchen Culture Kits - Intro Page

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Gabe15

Iʻll try to find some pictures, but in the meantime, I made up this diagram showing basically what happens after the initiation (when tissue culture becomes micropropagation). You will come across inconsistencies in actual practice, such as dead explants, contamination, varying degrees of proliferation, size of regenerated meristems and duration between meristem regenerations. But its generally what happens, or at least the way I do it is.

NOTE: The plants do not actually get smaller and smaller, I just only had a finite working space to show the examples.

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Growing bananas in Colorado, Washington, Hawaii since 2004. Commercial banana farmer, 200+ varieties.

mm4birds

good luck on this project. hopefully it will make it easier to obtain great plants for our own collections and prevent some of the rarer plants becoming extinct.

Richard

I received the copy of "Plants From Test Tubes" by Kyte and Kleyn today and started reading it. So far the writing style and information content is excellent.

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Chironex

Richard I got the same book from Amazon last week and I'm reading it too. I have also made contact with the Doctor that runs the Kitchen Culture website. She has sent me some more info as well as given my email to her associate who specializes in bananas. I must have downloaded a gazillion pages of info on TC already. Now if i could just find the time to read all of it. Burned through a fresh ink cartridge already.

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Scot

Richard

I would take all those pages you printed from the internet and throw them into the paper recycling. No really, some of them probably are worthwhile, but for any research in just about any subject: first read a thorough, well-rated book like the one we have. 2nd, if the book does not contain what is referred to as "survey of the literature", then find one and read further on topics as needed.

Also I would caution that reading the "how to" of Tiissue Culture is a bit like reading how to be a master cabinet maker. I expect it is going to take me a lot of patience and practice, including going through the amateur, apprentice, and journeyman phases.

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sandy0225

Yes, I've been on the home tissueculture webgroup for quite some time now >2 years, and I've learned a lot just from what others are posting. It seems the biggest issue is getting the right chemical blend for propagation of particular plants, they do recommend certain chemicals for bananas, but getting them "dialed in" can be a challenge. Also the biggest problem is contamination. Everything has to be sterile and kept that way. Even the smallest particle of dust contains thousands of different contaminants from bacteria to fungus.
I haven't actually tried tc yet because of lack of time issues, maybe this winter. I said that last year too, though.
I did get a cloning machine though, that sounded very do-able to me. I'm supposed to get it today.

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