Plant Tissue Culture

    Last week we began our propagation part of the course. We went on a field trip to Waimea nurseries in order to see their bench grafting in action. While we were there the guy speaking with us mentioned that they were in the process of setting up a tissue culture laboratory. I found this quite interesting so decided to do a little research on growing plants from tissue culture.

The first video I found has a good overview on tissue culture and how it has evolved over the years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xuwV3ywCxW8&list=WL&index=3&t=0s  

It also points out some benefits of tissue culture:
- Large numbers of plants can be grown in a short period
- Healthy plants can be grown from diseased plants
- Plants without seeds can be multiplied
- Useful when sexual reproduction is not possible

https://www.plantcelltechnology.com/pct-blog/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-plant-tissue-culture/
This website is also a good overview and it notes some of the disadvantages as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKxgPXOTH4M
This second video is a bit longer but touches on some more interesting points. Kaylee talks more about tissue culture for growing houseplants and how beneficial it is for filling the sudden customer demand that can come with houseplant popularity. She is based in the UK and mentions that 80% of plants in "big box stores" are grown from tissue culture. I would be very interested to know what our percent is here in NZ, I imagine it would be a lot lower! 

Kaylee also talks about how the scientific developments in tissue culture are kept secret as it is important intellectual property to the businesses that are researching it. Dave at Waimea Nurseries also touched on this, not just in reference to tissue culture but to any research and development in horticulture. He said that the industry can be somewhat cut-throat when it comes to new ideas. At the end of the day it all comes down to money, and the right intellectual property can mean financial gain for a business.

It seems that growing from plant tissue culture is all about mass production and it may just be the way of the future!

Re-veg check

    Part of our re-vegetation assignment is to monitor our plantings every 4-6 weeks. So last Thursday in the pouring rain, four of us ventured out to the planting site at Moturoa. Overall the site was looking good, the survival rate of plants was high and there wasn't many weeds growing. 

We didn't spend a huge amount of time there due to the weather. On our next check we will hopefully be able to take the time to check all of the plants more thoroughly and maybe remove weeds around the bases if necessary.

We did notice some pest damage particularly on the ngaio leaves as seen below.

 

There were also a couple of manuka that were looking rather brown and probably will not survive. One of the covers had blown over so we put that back in place. 

Even though it was a quick (and wet!) visit, it was great to see our plants surviving and I look forward to going back in years to come to see this stretch of native bush regenerating.