Ponderings...cold storage of meristems?

[Orchidflowerchild]

SO, with all the talk over at AOS about an American Heritage Orchid Collection(s), I've been thinking (a dangerous prospect (I know)). What if, instead of needing to provide greenhouse space, likely climate controlled, we harvested a few meristems from the orchids to be conserved? THen we could cryogenically store them. Granted, cryo storage is expensive, but I wonder if it would be more cost-effective, in the long run, than having to care for all those plants and also deal with potential problems of greenhouse culture, employment, management, etc....

The concept of meristem cloning was adapted from potatoes....why not cold storgage adapted from crop conservation efforts?

recent patent

Thoughts?

-Cj