Tissue Culture of hibiscus

[helixturnhelix]

Wow, very interesting guys!  Thank you for being so through   I am actually going to start doing some tissue culture on some of my plants.  The technique is really simple, the only problem is it takes a long time to get a plant from tissue culture to a size that will bloom and flower, my guess is probably about 1.5 - 2 years.  Even though it take a while, you get many plants from relatively little starting material. 

The best way to do this, is taking a piece of plant tissue and growing on an agar plate with high levels of Auxin and Cytokinin.  This causes callus formation which is pretty much undifferentiated plant tissue.  The next thing one does after forming a callus is subject the callus to different concentrations of Auxin and Cytokinin to induce root and leaf formation.  All you really need to do this is agar plates with the right concentrations of these plant hormones and some grow lights.  This  technique is widely used to propagate orchids and I think would be useful in resurrecting rare varieties worth keeping. 

[Nievesgirl]

Whoa I had no idea you could do this with plants I guess this is why I am so amazed with corals. You can cut a piece off and it will start growing lol

Please keep us updated on this process , where would you get Auxin and Cytokinin?

[helixturnhelix]

Hi Kerry,

Will do, with my indoor drip project, grow lights and tissue culture, I think I have quite a bit to keep me busy for a few weeks  Auxin and Cytokinin are active ingredients in rootone hormone.  To form a callus you need high concentrations of both these hormones, and the proportion present in rootone is right for root formation.  I would not be surprised if Auxin and Cytokinin were available at a agriculture supplies store.  Hmmm let me see if I can find where to grab this stuff.  

Found it : http://www.plantmedia.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=3_43_288_691

I love the edit option

[Charlie]

Chris, I'd love to see you take a look at tissue culture hibiscus. I tried it myself, even built a pressurized clean box to do the work in. I only had one success, using Soft Spot, but that 1 plant was not enough to actually say it was a success. For some reason hibiscus do not easily grow in tissue culture conditions. I know of 2 big labs that specialize in plant tissue culture that tried it and declared hibiscus unsuitable for tissue culture. I have some new clues that might help though, so maybe we could figure out a way to do it. It would probably be valuable if someone found a protocol that actually worked reliably. Interesting project, anyway.

Charlie

[helixturnhelix]

Hi charlie,

I would like to discuss doing hibiscus tissue culture, any suggestions would be great.  I probably wont start this project for a few months, but that will give me pretty of time to research protocols and get advice from other biologists

[Charlie]

Chris, is this at all related to what you will be learning in your pHD program?

The standard protocols for tissue culture of other popular species apparently don't work for hibiscus. I think some radical adjustments in the nutrient solutions is going to be the key. Maybe also some new approaches with hormones will also play a roll. Most of the failed attempts that I learned about resulted in either root or shoot formation but not both.

I spent a lot of time and a fair amount of money working on this. It wasn't all a waste, though, because my approach to propagating hibiscus relies on what I learned trying the micropropagation approach. Many of the techniques can be modified and applied to rooting hibiscus. One that did not work for me was to steriiize cuttings before use. I finally gave up on that approach and just look for healthy wood from healthy plants to start with.

Charlie