Ponderings...cold storage of meristems?

[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.