Tissue Culture, Have You Had Success?
J.E. Shields (Fri, 10 Sep 2010 05:37:35 PDT)

Setting it up in your kitchen is not all that hard to do, but getting a
sterile environment is really tricky and, especially for a beginner to test
tube or flask culture, will take some learning. It would help to at least
have taken a microbiology lab course at some time.

We ran into a further problem -- the storage area under lights had too low
a relative humidity and most of the dished eventually dried out. The guy I
was working with had plenty of experience, but we were doing it in his
basement. Retired folks have problems like that.

I'm still trying to decide whether I want to try some of it myself or
not. I did pick up a used glove box for a sterile transfer
environment. Glove boxes are easier to get and keep sterile, but a lot
less easy to work in than a laminar flow hood.

I prefer twin scaling or bulb chipping. I've done this with Lycoris and
with Haemanthus in the past. My yields were not much above 1 (one
surviving bulblet per bulb cut up). There are apparently some tricks of
technique to be learned even in simple twin-scaling. It looked really easy
when I saw it at Hadeco in South Africa.

In any case, practice on bulbs you can afford to lose!

Jim Shields

At 05:19 PM 9/9/2010 -0700, you wrote:

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Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd.
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