Hi all. My in-vitro plantlets arrived today, and they look so fragile in their sealed test tubes. I’m a bit concerned, I don’t want to lose any of them. How do I go about planting them out? What are the dos and don’ts in this case? How do I handle them from here on out?
I’ll be interested in following this thread. I would assume plants are treated like cuttings for awhile and a jar is turned over the plant to control humidity or a mister might be used. Since I have no experience with this im very interested in the topic.
Moisture control was indeed my main concern, but I think I have something figured out. Bags, instead of jars in my case.
Thanks for the forum link! I saw a lot of interesting stuff over there, a lot of stuff that will be useful to me. I didn’t find an answer to my particular question, though. Still, it’s great to know I have an accessible source to learn about in-vitro culture.
Now, regarding what I figured out, this is what I’ll be trying unless someone advises me otherwise. I’ll be doing it today:
I remembered that seed-grown potatoes can grow tall, spindly and unstable at first (under certain circumstances), so it’s recommended to add soil around the stem as they grow, until they’re thicker and stable. And a soil covering does provide fair moisture protection. My own tissue-cultured plants are tall and spindly themselves, and have roots in several places along the stem. So I’m gonna plant each in a proportionately tall and narrow pot (cheap party glasses in my case), and bury them deeply, leaving only a smaller bit of stem past soil level. I may place them in bags for moisture protection for the exposed part (puncturing extra holes in the bag daily, to acclimate them to my ambient moisture), but I’m wondering if having a mostly-buried stem would be protection enough.
I’m not sure this technique would work for every plant, but I think it should work for a lot of them, not just potatoes.
I did as I mentioned, yesterday…
I used bamboo skewers to punch a few holes at the bottom of the cups prior to filling them with moistened soil, and I used the skewers to gently remove the plants from their test tubes. I also used some cut up skewers as makeshift labels (I have none on hand); the number of skewer fragments in a cup identifies the particular variety. All are planted deeply in the cups as described, though the taller ones have an almost vine-like quality with the amount of stem protruding from the soil. I covered them with upside down ziplock bags (unsealed), and today I used the skewers to start the acclimation process, punching 5 pairs of small holes in each bag.
I misted heavily yesterday prior to bagging, and will be misting every other day during the acclimation process. However, I’ll be punching holes in the bags daily, 5 pairs at a time, which seems slow enough in my rainy weather to let them get used to the lowering moisture levels while being fast enough to finish the process soon (which is important as I think they’re fast growers, and pot-bound potatoes fail to produce well even after transplanting).
Once the bags are full of those small holes, I’ll start making the holes bigger until I’ve reduced the bag to a lattice and am confident that the plants are used to my ambient moisture, at which point the bags will come off. Then I’ll move them out of the shade and into a mildly lit area to acclimate them to the sun for a couple of days. After that, they’ll pretty much be growing like the rest of my plants, and I can plant them out to the big planter I have out back.
The rainy weather will probably make things tough on the potatoes, but as long as I can get them to flowering, the breeding project can proceed as planned. Besides… I’ll need to expose any resulting seedlings to all my poor weather for my “tough love” breeding approach.
