[OGD] Paph tissue culture

[Thomas Hillson]

I found the discussion on Paph tissue culture interesting, I used to 
manage in a research lab where we did lots of different tissue 
cultures. In my spare time I tried Paphiopedilums and found that even 
meristems taken from seedlings were very slow to grow and showed no 
signs of rapid propagation like Phalaenopsis or other orchids. I 
think it would be very interesting if someone could meristem 
Paphiopedilums to see how they would develop, and how the world of 
orchid growers would react to them. If we could clone very valuable 
and rare Paph. hybrids and species, I think it would be a great 
thing, I could get a clone of an awarded Sanderianum or 
Rothschildianum like I can a Cattleya or Oncidium.

Why can't we meristem Paphiopedilums? They grow very slowly, relative 
to most other orchids that we can meristem. I am using meristem as a 
generic term for clonal propagation. Maybe the best tissue to use 
would be from an inflorescence. If Will's method of decontamination 
would allow you to take a rapidly growing piece of tissue like and 
inflorescence maybe it would work?

I know in my other work the best things we could use in our work were 
rapidly growing shoot tips, we do not have any part of a 
Paphiopedilum that grows as fast as the materials we were working 
with.

Will we have clonal propagation of Paphiopedilums in the future? Who 
knows, it will take a lot of work and some good luck to do it.

--
--Tom
/----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Tom Hillson            Computer Services Manager
|(515) 294-1543      College of Agriculture
|                                  Iowa State University
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|"The only thing I have too much of is too little time"
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