Then and now.
 

In the Cold Hardy Bananas section, I saw a thread about, " Musa basjoo, then and now", and I thought of my experiences, then and now, with TC. When I read the thread, I saw that the time between the then and now, with the basjoo, was several months. The difference between my first contact with tissue culture (then), and now, is almost 30 years.
In the 1979 issue of, "Compact Fruit Tree", the journal of the International Dwarf Fruit Tree Association, is an article about tissue culture which includes the basic procedure, and some recipes for media. In those days, for the most part, you couldn't buy media; you had to obtain all of the chemical components, and mix them yourself. I expressed my interest to my wife, (an operating room supervisor) and she spoke to her boss (chief of surgery), and he said that he would get the chemicals for me from the lab. Then I had to measure the chemicals out, and some of the quantities are tiny, minute. (We're talking micro Moles & nano Moles, here) We needed a super accurate scale from a scientific supply house. They wouldn't sell it to individuals, (too often used for drugs) so my wife got the hospital to buy it, and she reimbursed them. Then, I had to have some containers to put the media in. I got baby food jars, from a neighbor, who had a small child. A pressure cooker was used to sterilize the jars and media. I didn't have a hood, for doing the transfers, so I had quite a bit of contamination, but I had one pear tree that made it, and is still in the yard today. There were lots of errors made then, by me, and the people who wrote the papers. (Some months later, I read where someone pointed out that some of the media components are heat-labile, and break down, or are destroyed, by steam sterilization.) Surprisingly though, things worked, anyway.
In subsequent tries, I either got the hospital lab to weigh out the media, or bought it pre-measured, and used my wife's OR autoclave for sterilizing, and the lab's laminar-flow hood for transfers.

Re: Then and now.
 

Thanks for the post John. It gives one a good perspective on how much has changed since then.

Today the general public doesn’t know much or anything about plant tissue culture. In 1979 I imagine very few people outside of educational institutions or research labs knew about plant tissue culture.

Plant tissue culture sure has come a long way. I saw a package of pre-sterilized agar media in the garden section of Menards, (a hardware store). The agar just had some IBA in it for rooting plants but who knows what things will be like in the future.

Do you still tissue culture plants?

Frank

Re: Then and now.
 

Francko - This is a very interesting topic. I have not done any, in the last several years, (Lately have bought most of my stuff from Agri-Starts, and others, in stage 3, or 4, but now am going to the workshop that Scot (Chironex) is organizing, to try to brush up on techniques. See the top (first sticky) post in this forum.

Re: Then and now.
 

Hi John,

Excellent!

I believe that is one that Carol Stiff is scheduled to give. I'll have to go to one of her workshops, maybe this year. It would be fun to meet a bunch of TC'ers.

Good work Scot for getting a group together for the workshop.

I just tried my first Musa Basjoo in tissue culture. It's only been in the jar a little over a week. Still too early for any signs of contamination but all looks good now. Gabe15 gave me some good pointers on preparing the explant by posting his video up on YouTube.

I live in N.W. Indiana - zone 5, and have a couple of them outside to see if they make it through the winter. We have had a few days of zero degrees F. At least the two big ones outside gave me 10 pups to bring into the house incase those don't make it. Well, minus one for the tissue culture:-)

It must be rewarding to still see the pear tree in your yard. Even more rewarding picking the pears:-) A fun hobby tissue culture.

Take care,
Frank

Re: Then and now.
 

Francko, we still have room for a few more in Las Vegas on March 14th. Thanks for your kind words. If you have an extra Basjoo pup that you don't what to do with, send that bad boy to me for TC. I want to try to make it variegated!

Re: Then and now.
 

Hi Chironex,

I wish I could make to Las Vegas.

If my TC skills are any good I should have some plants to send out. Of course it may take me 9 more times to get it right:-) We need an animated icon of a banana in a test tube with a scared look of impending doom on its face.

How is your TC doing?

You have quite a collection of Bananas. I just started to get the banana bug. They are great plants and there are so many types. Wish I could increase the variety a bit. In my zone I'm limited to just the cold hardy Musa Bassjoo.

Re: Then and now.
 

Hey Francko,
The TC is going well. Only a few set-backs along the way. Wish you could make it to LV too. Maybe there will be one closer to you. You know their office is in Monmouth, WI, so you could visit her for a day trip. I bet you would only be about 3-4 hours drive time one way.

You can generally check my progress on this thread: http://www.bananas.org/f260/my-home-...html#post53937

I am using to chronicle my progress, although I have been a bit lax lately. Getting ready to do some real experiments in the near future. Embryo rescue with stronger medium, variegation induction, mutant generation, efforts to hasten germination, different effects of medium additions like thidiazuron, charcoal, and so on. Also going to cause mutations and try some breeding with creating tetraploids from diploids then back-crossing them with diploids. I was going to use colchicine, but it is far too dangerous, so I am trying oryzalin instead.

Keep in touch with what you are doing via these threads and we can all compare notes.