SBIR-STTR Award

Commercial tissue culture propagation of plant cultivars is now limited to specialty crops because of the high unit cost of plants so propagated. This cost is the combined effect of the labor intensive nature of manual tissue transfer whether for medium renewal or change and low multiplication rate of the culture method used. The rooting medium module now widely used as a final medium for rooting of tissue cultured plants in preparation for field or greenhouse transplanting in its most improved form is highly adaptable to introduction at far earlier steps in the tissue culture process. The approach advanced uses this rooting medium module as a benign, porous matrix and a poplar hybrid as the test tissue. Medium renewals and changes necessary to the tissue culture of plants are accomplished by appropriate active elution methods which permit changing media without tissue transfer. This system will eliminate all manual tissue transfers, enabling full automation of tissue culture production of clonal plant populations with attendant high efficience and low unit cost. The end product of this easily automated system is a mechanically transplantable tissue cultured plant ready for field deployment.The potential commercial application as described by the awardee: This research addresses the principal constraint upon clonal plant propagation of economic crops. Many major corporations are now entering this field. Commercial applications in forestry and agriculture are unbounded.

The aim of the proposal is to develop nondamaging automated techniques for transfer of tissue aliquots in the regeneration of transplantable plants from callus cultures in liquid culture on the basis of the state of differentiation, viability, endogenous vigor and genetic stability. He would test laboratory prototypes for efficacy in nondestructive separation of tissues on the basis of differences in the properties of differentiated and nondifferentiated tissues and assess the reliability of the systems thus derived. He would also determine the optical properties of the tissues to be transferred while suspended in a transparent medium and devise optical or other systems capable of reliably assessing tissue separation. This proposal addresses an important constraint upon clonal plant propagation. It proposes methods which, if successful, would eliminate the labor intensive stages in handling of plant tissue cultures for large scale propagation