Your emersed set up is awesome. I'm just trying to grow a handful of plants though. Maybe a dozen. Hoping to find more of a small set-up solution.
As far as the tissue culture, I am actually familiar with that. I tissue culture orchids. I've done aquatic plants, but only moved some that were already sterile and in culture over into fresh media to try to make few extra plants. I haven't gotten it to work so great. Anubias grow so slowly, Echinodorus stay tiny, and other plants struggle. I'd be interested to know what media you use and any tips you have, especially with the Anubias and other stem plants. I've just been using MS media and adding sugar.
Attached a pic of an orchid in media for fun,
View attachment 12822
Looks great! Good job!
I don't have access to my media formulations - they were all written on paper on the desk at the time, and that paper is 3000km away from me. But when I return to my country for vacation again, I can grab this notebook and share it.
My top secret formulas was there
As you know, unless you're lucky, growing aquatic plants 1:1 in an in-vitro environment isn't really possible. I didn't work on in-vitro for a very long time. The challenges of doing it at home - maintaining a sterile environment (especially for media preparation, etc.) - are quite demanding.
Media =>
Murashige & Skoog medium including vitamins | Duchefa Biochemie
My reason for getting into in-vitro production was that I needed mother plants for the plants I was growing in the greenhouse. It's not always possible to continuously prune and propagate every species growing in the greenhouse depending on the season, because different species start flowering after showing growth during different seasonal transitions. For example, Rotala species start flowering in summer, while Pogostemon species start flowering as temperatures drop and daylight hours decrease. Therefore, for situations like these, you need to have in-vitro mother plants so you can replant.
Additionally, due to some other problems with greenhouse cultivation, in-vitro mother plants are absolutely essential to this production process. Because from time to time you need to reset the greenhouse and do a thorough cleaning - otherwise there's no other way to get rid of formations like
cyanobacteria, fungus/mold. The combination of reasons like these pushed me toward in-vitro production, and to this day it has been the most enjoyable growing method - the reward for the effort is great.
As you also know, the harder part of this work than growing the plant is obtaining a sterile mother plant, and this is a process that takes a very serious amount of time. In a relatively short period, I was able to achieve success with these species by partially using
PPM (Plant Preservative Mixture) (both in media and sterilization stages).
Species I managed to propagate (more accurately, species I could propagate because I was able to achieve sterilization):
- Hemianthus Callitrichoides Cuba
- Rotala H'ra
- Echinodorus Tenellus (Helianthum Tenellum)
- Staurogyne Repens
- Ludwigia mini super red (Ludwigia palustris red)
- Micranthemum Monte Carlo
- Eleocharis Acicularis Mini (pusilla)
From this list, the ones I could produce stably without issues through subcultures:
- Staurogyne Repens
- Hemianthus Callitrichoides Cuba
- Eleocharis acicularis mini
All of the above species were grown in 1/2 concentration MS media. Sugar ratios were between 20-30g/L, and the culture media contained 1ml/L PPM. Also, I achieved the fastest growth in all plants in liquid media. When using agar agar, S. repens generally showed good development with agar-based media too, but it was much faster in liquid media.
Monte Carlo was the plant I tried the most to propagate, but despite trying this plant with many different nutrient concentrations and different sugar media types, I couldn't succeed (maybe the problem was using PPM! I don't know). I would observe growth in the first week, and it was in quite good form. But afterward, despite not seeing phenolic exudation or contamination, the plant would dissolve and disappear. I experienced a similar problem with Hemianthus micranthemoides.
Apart from these, there's no need for hormones like BAP. I obtained BAP and tried propagating Rotala H'ra this way - as you can see in the photos, it produced incredibly hundreds of new shoots. But the problem is that in media without BAP, it was producing sufficient shoots "for my greenhouse production needs." It might be necessary for callus culture, etc., but that's also a difficult path to work with, at least for a home environment and for an amateur like me. So I didn't use BAP or any similar stimulator for the plants I propagated.
Now I remembered while looking at old photos to add to the topic. I was using BAP at a very low concentration for S. repens. If I remember correctly, 0.1mg/L - this encouraged it to continuously produce new side shoots instead of callus formation, and as you can see from the photos, I was getting good results. However, I'm not entirely sure about the ratio - I'm talking about 2019, and it's not really possible for me to give exact ratios without accessing the notebook I mentioned. I've forgotten many things.
