Tissue culture is fast becoming one of the most transformative tools in modern agriculture. It has already revolutionized the cultivation of crops like bananas and orchids by producing clean, disease-free, and genetically superior plants.
Today, cannabis growers are employing the technique to preserve strains with desirable characteristics and scale production. In this guide, we discuss how cannabis tissue culture plants work, the process, and its advantages. Read on.
What Is Cannabis Tissue Culture?
Tissue culture, also known as micropropagation, is a method used to grow multiple plants from a small tissue sample. This method of propagation involves taking tiny tissue samples from the stem, leaf, or root and introducing them to a sterile, artificial environment that allows them to grow into multiple plant shoots.
Unlike traditional cuttings, tissue culture allows you to store genetics for prolonged periods or to produce multiple plant clones from a tiny tissue sample. This makes cannabis tissue culture the perfect cloning method for large-scale operations.
Tissue culture cannabis plantlets are less likely to carry or spread pathogens and pests by using tiny, sterilized plant tissues. The process is performed in a sterile environment, reducing the risk of disease.
Tissue Culture vs Taking Cuttings: Which Is Better?
Tissue culture and taking cuttings are two ways of cloning desirable cannabis plants. Taking cuttings is a traditional approach, while tissue culture is a more advanced, modern approach to clonal propagation. But is newer better?
Taking cuttings is an old but simple technique. It involves cutting a stem from a selected mother plant and planting it in a growing medium. The cutting will develop roots and grow into a clone of the mother plant.
Cannabis sativa tissue culture works with small samples of the mother plant called explants. The explants are sterilized and rooted in a culture vessel using a sterile growing media.
But which is better? Taking cuttings or cannabis tissue culture?
While cuttings are easy and inexpensive, taking cuttings from the same mother plant over time may lead to progressive loss of vigor due to biological aging and pathogen accumulation. In contrast, cannabis tissue culture produces genetically identical clones that can be cryopreserved for future use.
Advantages of Cannabis Tissue Culture
Experienced cannabis growers are switching to tissue culture due to the significant advantages it offers over traditional methods. Here are some of the benefits:
1. Tissue Culture is Space Efficient
You can produce multiple plantlets in a much smaller space than traditional plant cloning methods such as taking cuttings. The plant tissue samples are also small, often one centimeter or less.
Dozens or even hundreds of plants can be started in the same room size occupied by just the mother plant. A cannabis tissue culture lab utilizes approximately one-tenth of the space used by other cloning techniques.
2. Improved Genetic Stability
Taking cuttings suffers the risk of genetic drift over time. Tissue culture plantlets are genetically identical to the mother plant and can be preserved to produce clones for many generations without a decline in vigor or desired traits.
3. Disease and Pest Free Plants
The ability to produce pathogen, disease, and pest-free plantlets is one of the most significant advantages of tissue culture. Abnormalities can also be spotted much earlier, helping producers discard faulty samples.
The process of producing tissue culture cannabis requires intricate sterilization practices. Sterilization eradicates pathogens and pests that may latch on the mother plant tissue and ensures they aren’t transferred to the clones.
4. Year Round Production
Tissue culture is typically done in a controlled and sterile environment. This means the plantlets aren’t affected by seasons and can be churned out all year.
Cannabis tissue culture enables you to produce a ready supply of clones for personal or commercial cultivation all year round.
5. Rapid Mass Production of Disease Free Clones
Tissue culture allows cannabis cultivators to produce a large number of clones from one mother plant compared to traditional cloning methods. With cannabis tissue culture, you can produce large numbers of plantlets from a small amount of plant tissue in a relatively short time.
6. Long-Term Genetic Preservation
Tissue culture allows cultivators to cryopreserve plant genetics for long periods without wasting valuable space. This is crucial, especially if the cultivator intends to use the genetics for multiple generations producing uniform and consistent plants and yields.
How Cannabis Tissue Culture Works
These four stages of cannabis tissue culture are crucial for the plant’s successful propagation.
Sample collection and sterilization
The process begins with taking a suitable explant from the mother plant. An explant is any viable cell, organ, or tissue extracted from the mother plant to serve as the starting material for tissue culture. This could be a leaf, shoot tip, stem, or root from a genetically desirable female cannabis plant.
The explant is then sterilized to remove contaminants and pathogens and prevent the growth of fungi and bacteria. This step involves washing the explant with tap water to remove general dirt and attached materials before dipping them in sterilization agents.
The most commonly used sterilization agents are hydrogen peroxide, calcium hypochlorite, mercuric chloride, ethanol and sodium hypochlorite also known as bleach. The explants are then rinsed using sterilized distilled water to remove sterilization agent residue which may be toxic to the plant cells if not thoroughly purged.
Explant Culturing
The explant is then placed in a sterile nutrient-rich growth media, where it undergoes rapid cell division and multiplication. The medium contains essential minerals, sugars, and plant hormones, which help the cells divide and grow into new shoots.
The plant tissue forms calluses, which are then transferred to fresh callus induction media containing growth regulators such as auxins and cytokinins to promote multiple-shoot development and proliferation.
Rooting
The shoots are transferred to a rooting medium containing auxins, a phytohormone that stimulates the development of roots.
Root development is crucial in all cloning techniques as it allows the shoots to absorb nutrients and water from their future growth medium.
Acclimatization
Tissue culture cannabis plants are gradually exposed to ambient conditions, including varying temperatures, lighting, humidity, and reduced watering to acclimatize them. This is to toughen them up before they are transplanted to the greenhouse for full development.
Examples of Companies Using Cannabis Tissue Culture
Many companies are successfully using tissue culture to produce uniform and consistent cannabis plants at a commercial level. There are also several bioscience companies offering tissue culture solutions to large scale and hobbyist cannabis growers.
Phylos Bioscience is one such company. Phylos is leading the charge by offering cannabis tissue culture solutions to growers, helping them preserve their unique genetics as they scale their operations. Phylos also helped launch Conception Nurseries, a clone nursery that pioneered supplying new cannabis varieties grown from tissue culture to breeders of all sizes.
Similarly, Front Range Biosciences has revolutionized the industry by using tissue culture to produce pathogen and disease-free cannabis clones at a commercial scale.
Meristematic Labs is also on the front-lines offering testing, storage and cannabis tissue culture starter kits to hobbyist growers. The company partnered with DNA Genetics in 2021 to provide growers with clean cultivars and starter plants.
Plant Cell Technology is a company leading the way in cannabis tissue culture solutions. The company offers tissue culture products, growth regulators, plant hormones and lab equipment to commercial growers, research labs and hobbyists. PCT also offers tissue culture master classes to growers.
Athena is another company offering tissue culture lab equipment and culture media for commercial and hobbyist operations. The company also offers procedures and other informative guides for a successful tissue culture.
Is Tissue Culture Right for You?
Here is how to determine if cannabis tissue culture is right for your grow operations:
1. Scale of Operation
If you are running a large scale operation that requires a large number of consistent, disease free plants, tissue culture could be the ideal solution. Tissue culture allows you to get multiple plants from a small sample. However, if you are a hobbyist looking to clone a few plants, traditional cuttings might still be the best option.
2. Importance of Genetic Consistency
How crucial is maintaining consistent genetic traits? Tissue culture is the best option for maintaining consistent genetics as it reduces the risk of genetic drift.
Cuttings, while inexpensive, are susceptible to genetic drift which may affect consistency in traits such as potency, cannabinoid profiles and growth characteristics over time.
3. Available Resources and Expertise
Cannabis tissue culture requires a significant investment than cuttings. For a successful tissue culture operation, a sterile lab environment, nutrient-rich medium, plant hormones and lighting are required.
Tissue culture also demands technical expertise if you are to propagate cannabis plants successfully. If you have the necessary resources and knowledge, tissue culture is a viable option.
4. Desired Yields
Maximizing yields is a priority for any operation. If high yields with consistent quality are crucial for your cannabis grow operations, tissue culture is the ideal option as it allows you to optimize traits that may improve productivity.
5. How Long You Want to Preserve the Genetics
If you have premium or unique cannabis genetics worth preserving for generations, tissue culture provides a way to store and maintain them for a long time utilizing minimal space.
Traditional cuttings may be good for a few generations after which the effects of genetic drift may start becoming apparent.
Importance of Cannabis Tissue Culture Propagation
Tissue culture is revolutionizing how we grow cannabis. This method offers cannabis growers the ability to produce multiple disease-free and genetically stable clones of superior cannabis strains.
Cannabis tissue culture provides significant advantages over other cloning methods, such as cutting. However, it also requires a considerable investment, specialized equipment, and expertise.
However, as cannabis cultivation evolves and modernizes, tissue culture is becoming a revolutionary way for growers to preserve the genetics of premium strains, enhance yields, and produce high-quality plants. Whether you are a commercial grower or an enthusiast, exploring this technique could take your cultivation to the next level.
Comments