erycina pusilla - school project - Orchid Board

Koen · #1 10-03-2011, 06:00 AM

hello everyone,

for my school GCSE exams, I have to make to do research, and you have to generate your own research data for a paper.

I'm going to do a research on erycina pusile. I'm going to investegate what is the influence of a single, or maybe a few nutrients, on the growing and flowering of erycina pusilla. Because I only have three months to do my research, I need to start with flower sized plants. I'm going to replate the on my own medium, with different amounts of the nutrient/nutrients. Then I will wait and see what's the result of the different amounts of nutrients on teh growing and flowering of erycina pusilla.

I'm living in The Netherlands, so I got in touch with Johan Keus, who has got a lot of experience with growing this species in vitro. I'm also going to try to get in touch with Barbara Gravendeel, who studies the genetics on this species.

But I do not know what's the most important nutrient for erycina pusilla. I'm going ot use a standard medium, and add different amounts of one or a few nutrients to the medium.

I was thinking about varieing the amount of magnesium in the replate medium. Or a nutrient which has got a significant influence on this spcies. I need to have claer results, in only three months. Can anyone please help me?

greets,

Koen

My english will not be great, but I hope you can understand it. Otherwise, please ask me, and I will try to explain, so you will understand, and maybe can help me.

WhiteRabbit · #2 10-04-2011, 12:04 AM

Sounds very interesting! Sorry, I can't help

Hopefully someone can - GL!

camille1585 · #3 10-04-2011, 04:50 AM

I think 3 months is awfully short to do a project with orchids (since they grow slowly) and hope to have statisitically significant differences appear between your treatments.

But I'm not understanding something. You say you want to use flowering plants, but then you mention replating media and such, which would imply that you are using protocorms or very young seedlings.

All nutrients are necessary for growth, and this for all species, and most plants in general. If you take one away then of course you are going to see differences. Same thing if you add 'too much' of another nutrient. For instance, too much calcium will block the assimilation of nitrogen. An idea could also be to vary the pH on the medium as it will influence the availability of nutrients.

Don't worry about your English, it's quite good! I have no troubles understanding.

Wjs2nd · #4 10-04-2011, 08:52 AM

I believe he is using replating media to grow in-vitro (like glass culture or s/h growing).
Vary anything enough and you should get results. I just don't know about 3 months. It will take the plants time to adjust to the in-vitro culture method. Maybe, you should just use modified/different water for each plant. Some plants get unhappy being repotted too. It would be very hard to tell what was effecting to orchid, the change in culture, repotting, or the medium. Good luck!

Koen · #5 10-04-2011, 09:52 AM

hello everyone,

thanks for your answers.

I'm going to use flowering sized plants, an replant/out them in mediums with a variating factor, like different amounts if a specific nutrient.
The idea of varieing the pH sounds nice. I'm going to do more research for that.

I'm not going to use plant which were not grown up in vitro. I start with flowering plants, which are in vitro already, in a standard medium. I'm going to transplant the plants into a new medium, which i made by myself. In that mediums i'm going to vary with some things, like amounts of nutrients.

I hope everything is clear by now.

greets,

Koen

orchidsamore · #6 10-04-2011, 04:06 PM

Your use of the term in vitro is confusing everyone since it means something different from what you are doing in the orchid world.

You may have the most interesting results with varying PH rather than nutrients. Orchids need very small amounts of nutrients compared to other plants. As a result it can be years before a deficiency appears.

PH definitely affects the ability of plants to absorb micro-nutrients. The ability to absorb Magnesium, Calcium etc can drop off to almost no absorption after the PH exceeds about 7.4. I do not know how it is done, but you can measure the amount of each of these micro-nutrients in the plants themselves. If you can get results from slices of the plant material you can have results for your experiment. You will not see any changes in the orchids in only three months even if changes are occuring inside the plant.

This might give you some results in three months but normally anything of this nature will take a year or more to notice results. It is especially difficult with orchids since most will stop growing around now for genetic reasons.

camille1585 · #7 10-04-2011, 05:01 PM

Maybe you could do the same experiment, but with plants (not necessarily orchids even) that grow very quickly. That way you'll be sure to observe some differeces between your treatments.

kavanaru · #8 10-04-2011, 05:20 PM

Correct me if I am wrong... I think the confusion is based on the fact that Psygmorchis pusilla (correct name for Erycina pusilla) is often offered flowering size, still in-vitro, as a curiosity (seen often in eBay as well as some shops in Europe) The plants are in sterile medium in a more or less fancy flask....

Now, as for your project, if you mean plants as I mentioned above, you will most probably lost them once you open the flask and change to the medium you are preparing, due to fungi or bacteria infections, unless you have a good knowledge of in-vitro culture and also the right tools... Without wanting to scare you regarding orchid culture, I think for your project you could find better plant models than orchids!

kmccormic · #9 10-25-2011, 01:16 PM

Per orchids.co.in, "The flowers appear irregularly ,mostly in the summer " What if Koen were to replicate spring/summer for these plants and try to "force bloom" them, or maybe a different plant? Some plants will bloom in winter if given enough concentrations of the right amount of nutrients and the right conditions.

Koen - did you already start your project? What did you end up doing? Are you seeing any results?

Koen · #10 10-26-2011, 05:30 PM

hello to all of you,

for my research, i have decided to vary the pH in my investigation. I think i'm going to vary the pH from pH5 to pH9.
In my opinion, it's way to complicated to go vary the amounts of different nutrients. So i decided to keep it simple and vary the pH and see what happens.

Erycona pusilla can flower all year round indoor in vitro, so it can be used for my investigation. I'm going to use flouting sized plants, and transplant them onto the mediums (whit varying pH) which i made by myself.

Greets,

Koen