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

[isurus79]

I dont know about you, but I'd rather look at actual plants rather than machines holding frozen cells of plants. Its pretty hard to convince people that these organisms need to be saved/preserved/whatever if all you have are machines. That applies to attracting young people to orchids, as well as fund raising for conservation efforts. Also, I would imagine that the AOS will be trying preserve not just a few specimens of rare orchids, but will also be trying to preserve genetically viable populations to possibly reintroduce back into the wild. Having only a few specimens of each plant does not represent a viable population safeguard because of the genetic deficiencies of only a few individuals (contrary to the Noah's Ark tale!). Cryogenic freezing might be an interesting backup system, though all of the above drawbacks would still be inherent in such a backup, as well as probably being cost prohibitive. Personally, I think greenhouses stocked full of plants are the way to go.

[Orchidflowerchild]

Originally Posted by isurus79

I dont know about you, but I'd rather look at actual plants rather than machines holding frozen cells of plants. Its pretty hard to convince people that these organisms need to be saved/preserved/whatever if all you have are machines. That applies to attracting young people to orchids, as well as fund raising for conservation efforts. Also, I would imagine that the AOS will be trying preserve not just a few specimens of rare orchids, but will also be trying to preserve genetically viable populations to possibly reintroduce back into the wild. Having only a few specimens of each plant does not represent a viable population safeguard because of the genetic deficiencies of only a few individuals (contrary to the Noah's Ark tale!). Cryogenic freezing might be an interesting backup system, though all of the above drawbacks would still be inherent in such a backup, as well as probably being cost prohibitive. Personally, I think greenhouses stocked full of plants are the way to go.

Well, but greenhouses stocked full are open to fires and freezes and lazy greenhouse managers. Nevermind something like Benlate... Meanwhile, I'm not talking about reintroduction of anything, but a collection of valuable, historically significant, and awarded plants. Breeding and banking are two different things.

-Cj

[isurus79]

Originally Posted by Orchidflowerchild

Well, but greenhouses stocked full are open to fires and freezes and lazy greenhouse managers. -Cj

Im pretty sure laboratories suffer from the same human induced troubles that greenhouses suffer from!!

But Im wondering why cryogenically freeze the plant cells when you can have multiple greenhouses with multiple growers all cultivating these special species and clones? It would be more cost effective (IMO) to have several volunteer growers keeping several different cuttings or meristems of the individual awarded plants in their care than at a laboratory. Not to mention the fact that having multiple growers of the same exact plant would then drastically reduce the chance of a catastrophic loss of all the plants, as would be possible in a lab with frozen cells. Just my , maybe a few more. lol

[PainterArt]

Hello CJ,
Hope all is well with you.
Actually, there is work being done with orchids and cryogenics of seed and meristems by Dr Vendrame at TREC Faculty - Wagner Vendrame -- Tropical Research and Education Center
He has also done experiments with orchid propagation in space (not him personally in space). TREC is a participant in the Orchid Conservation Coalition. Orchid Conservation Coalition
Another person who is working on cryogenics is Margaret From of the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo. You can read a little about her cryogenic experiments in regard to safe guarding C. candidum seeds at a pdf article found at (look in the right hand column for the link to the article. OCC: C candidum
The cryogenic information is in the section "Seed-banking the local wild-type" of the article.
I think the AOS's American Heritage Orchid Collection initiative is primarily focused on save current and past award culitivars of both hybrids and species. This will save some genetic diversity of species.
The Living Orchid Collection (LOC) Orchid Conservation Coalition: Living Orchid Collection a program of the Orchid Conservation Coalition aims at saving a large genetic pool of species. Those flowers consider as dogs or awarded by the human eye. The pollinator "eye" might see things differently. While the American Heritage Orchid Collection is only open to institutions, LOC is open to individuals and societies and could be used for pollen swapping. Orchid Society's members could take on a collective effort to ex situ conservation of various genus.

Mark Sullivan

[Orchidflowerchild]

Well, I knew there was work being done on cold storage of seeds, but I was curious about those rare and awarded hybrids and species the AOS is out to preserve. The big advantage over live plants, as I see it, is that you can store virus-free tissue for later cloning (should the mother plant perish, or get a virus) and there is no chance of problems like that old Benlate debacle.

Species conservation is another issue, entirely. And yes, it should focus on a broader range of representation of the plants, not just what we as humans find attractive.

-Cj

[PainterArt]

Well, I take my opportunities where I can and species conservation and what the AOS is doing is not that far removed.
The AOS has a way to go before it consider cryogenics of awarded hybrids and species meristems. They still have to find out what live plants exist of awarded hybrids and species before they could get the meristems. There is no short cut over a live plant collection to start with. Is cryogenics a possible part of the future conservation of awarded hybrids and species? Yes. But it is far down the road. Besides if you only have cryogenic meristems and pictures, you may as well have only pictures if you don't turn those meristems into live plants from time to time.