Re: Going to buy the Tissue Culture kit
OK, it took some time, but now me & a friend are ready to TC. We didn't go for the TC-kit, but bought the stuff we needed from Phytotech-Lab. They shipped fast and cheap, and answered our questions the best they could. (Even though they probably got tired of hearing from 2 crazy Norwegians!) They have 2 different culture mediums specifically for bananas: Basal medium and Multiplication medium, the latter you have to add sugar. You also need agar, and they reccomended special lids for the containers, wich in our case are baby-food jars.
Apparently, it's possible to TC very young seedlings. I am still confused about wich part of the banana-plant you sterilize and use for your very first step-culture. I have read you can use almost any part of the plant with meristomatic cells, even the flower-stem(?) In that case you could theoretically TC grocery-store bananas if you take tissue from where they "hang together", but as I said, I am very confused. Some people talk about chopping the plant-material into a fine paste, and TC this. It seems some people also go inside the stem, just above the corm, and take tissue from here. If anyone can verify and/or explain further, I would be very grateful.
Erlend
__________________
|