Micro-propagation of Phalaenopsis

[matjones348]

Good morning everyone!

I'm looking at doing a small project to clone some phalaenopsis, I've done a tonne of research regarding it and came up with the conclusion that the best way to proceed would be to stem propagate several internodal sections of the flower stalk, then use small sections of the young leaf explants from the stem propagations to induce PLB's in a seperate nutrient medium, then proliferate the PLB's in a different liquid medium, and then induce shoots and plantlets on a solid agar based medium.

I came up with lots of different info on the best mediums to use, so asked a couple of websites that sold the various mediums which they would recommend and they told me that the way I was trying to propagate is not a standard procedure so they couldnt advise.

So my question today is, does anybody know how they commercially clone phalaenopsis please?

Many thanks for your replies, all appreciated!!

[MattWoelfsen]

You might want to contact Peter Lin of Big Leaf Orchids.

[ALToronto]

Meristem cloning is a completely different process from stem propagation. You need a clean room with a laminar flow hood, a good microscope, some really fine scalpels and a special cloning machine (available in hydroponics stores). The above would cost you at least $1000 if you bought all the items used on ebay.

Mass-market orchids are all meri-clones. The greenhouses that produce them are multimillion $$ operations. What they do is not for hobbyists.

[orchidsarefun]

for stem propagation , I suggest you e-mail Shane at OrchidOrigins. He does mine .
I am not sure how many plantlets you want to produce but in theory you only need a single stem section to literally produce hundreds.

[matjones348]

Hi,

I don't think that the procedure I'm looking at doing would be classified as mericloning, since I'm not looking at obtaining the apical meristem and culturing that?

- I've found a few studies which suggest that you can induce protocorm like bodies by culturing young leaves in a plant hormone regulating medium, and that these can then be induced to produce shoots by taking them off the hormone regulating medium. - This is what I'm looking at.

I dont think that I would need the lab equipment spoken of as the same level of sterility is required for seed propagation and hobbyists do this.

If anyone interested in what I'm looking it, then please see page 950 of Joseph Arditti's micropropagation of orchids (Can be viewed on google books) for a diagram.

Orchidsarefun - The hundreds of plantlets you are talking of from a single stem section, is this by using a similar procedure that I've described?

[orchidsarefun]

I think so. It was explained to me that growths produced by the stem propagation procedure could themselves be cloned.......and so on.
( bearing in mind my "stem" is your "flower stalk" - not "leaves" )

[Ben Belton]

It is possible to produce PBL's from leaf tissue from a stem prop. I have seen discussions, someone had a paper, and a friend tried it. He had good initial success but was got busy and wasn't able to complete the try. I think he grew the leaf on regular media like O139 from Phytotech. The difference was the hormone used and I don't know what that was. It is fairly toxic.

If you don't want many plant, I'd just stick with stem props. Much easier. This guy wanted to produce the PBL's so that maybe he could colchicine treat them and make tetraploid versions of the mother plant.