TISSUE CULTURE

What Is Plant Tissue Culture?

Plant Tissue Culture (often referred to as PTC or TC) technology has been used commercially for decades. Today it’s widely used across a variety of agricultural and horticultural sectors. Commercially successful TC crops include bananas, berries, fruit and nut trees, hops, and orchids, among others. Tissue Culture is finally taking root in the cannabis industry as plant tissue culture scientists bring their knowledge and expertise to newly legalized markets..

How Does Tissue Culture Propagation Work?

By taking just a small sample from a genetically desirable plant (the mother), tissue culture techniques restore genetic vigor while sterilizing the plant tissue to ensure it is completely pest and pathogen free.

Here’s how we nurture your plant so it becomes the best version of its genetics:

1. When using Tissue Culture propagation, also known as Tissue Culture cloning, plant material first goes through a thorough sterilization and pathogen screening process. 
2. Then, the cleaned plant tissue is kept in a completely sealed and sterile environment throughout its growth.
3. In this optimal environment the plant receives nutrients, hormones, carbohydrates and moisture from the gelled medium.
4. The plant tissue remains in these ideal growing conditions until the sample has grown enough to be cloned.
5. Next, microcuttings are taken.
6. The plant tissue is then cut into nodes and regrown until ready for rooting and eventual transplantation into a production growth environment. 
7. This process is repeated cycle after cycle, generating a multitude of plants in a much smaller space and consuming fewer resources than a traditional cannabis nursery.

Using this process, valuable genetics can be banked or the cultured tissue can be used to produce countless more clean and true-to-type clones.

Cannabis Tissue Culture: Traditional vs. Gen Zero Clones

Cloning by way of taking vegetative cuttings from a mother plant is a traditional tried and tested technique in cannabis and many other agricultural sectors. Practiced and refined by cultivators and breeders over decades, the goal is to preserve prized genetics.

Cannabis Tissue Culture cloning enhances this ad hoc genetic preservation with the most advanced and effective horticultural techniques. This relatively new cannabis propagation tool offers cultivators, breeders, and business operators a much more reliable and advanced process. Tissue Culture both preserves prized genetics and replicates them with an even higher degree of accuracy that can be repeated almost indefinitely.

Cannabis Tissue Culture can be used to produce  “generation zero” (or gen zero) clones. In contrast to “generation one” clones propagated from tissue culture mother plants or clones from traditional cuttings,   gen zero clones are the only plants you can rest assured will be true-to-type and completely pest and pathogen free.

Traditional clones clipped from a vegetative plant may  inherit a more mature hormone composition or contamination from their mother, which in turn negatively impacts the genetic potential of the mature plant—not to mention the hit it takes on quality, yields and the bottom line of your business. 

Gen zero clones harness all the benefits of Tissue Culture—restored genetic vigor and sterilization—in each and every plant, providing you with consistent results through each and every grow cycle.

How Can Tissue Culture Serve the Cannabis Industry?

While traditional cloning has kept, and continues to keep, favored cannabis industry genetics going, Tissue Culture technologies bring distinct new advantages to the future of cannabis breeding and cultivation: Pest and Pathogen Free Clones.

The risk of spreading devastating pests and diseases can be significantly reduced. Not only does the Tissue Culture process provide completely pest-free gen zero clones , it allows for the identification and removal of endogenous pathogens and/or contaminants such as Hop Latent Viroid within the plant tissue.

Once cleaned and sterilized, Tissue Culture clones are grown in a completely sealed and sterile environment where they are provided an optimal blend of nutrients, hormones,carbohydrates, and moisture in the plant growth medium and rooting substrate to support development until they are ready to be shipped to customers.   

Vigorous True-to-Type Genetics

Introducing a plant into Tissue Culture allows for the restoration of its genetics to a juvenile state, offering true-to-type plants not hindered by the generational changes that can happen with traditional cloning, such as loss of vigor and reduced yields.

Increased apical dominance, consistent internode spacing and symmetrical lateral branching are all benefits that are enjoyed when juvenile vigor is restored via Tissue Culture.

Consistent Growth and Yields

Working with healthy genetics and clean plants allows for more consistent growth and yields. These results can be reproduced from generation to generation and harvest to harvest thanks to the repeatable and exact nature of Tissue Culture technologies.

How to Integrate Tissue Culture Into Your Business Model

Tissue Culture can serve your business at many points in the grow cycle:

• Tissue Culture clones can be sourced for clean mom stock to restore prized genetics, bringing back their original health and vigor.
  
• Pest- and pathogen-free gen zero Tissue Culture clones can be used for production stock—a step that significantly mitigates the risk involved with sourcing or propagating clones via traditional methods.
• Quarantine rooms and multiple plant redundancies could be made a thing of the past when you partner with a cannabis Tissue Culture specialist to bank your genetics or for the exclusive production of your production stock.
  
• To harness the full suite of benefits Tissue Culture offers, you could also build out your very own Tissue Culture lab.

Tissue Culture offers a truly diverse and versatile set of technological capabilities, the breadth of which we’re only beginning to tap into.

Take a Virtual Tour of Our Tissue Culture Lab

If you’re interested in gen zero cannabis tissue culture clones for your business, Conception Nurseries is the only tissue culture specialist offering true gen zero clones at scale. Our team of plant scientists and cannabis cultivators come together in tailoring our approach to meet the specific needs and goals of cannabis businesses. We deliver added value in the details: vigorous pest- and pathogen-free clones that we then carefully select and sort to offer you a much more consistent canopy and yield.

Do you want to see just how the Tissue Culture process works here at Conception Nurseries? We’d love to take you on a virtual tour of our first-in-class Tissue Culture Lab facilities. Get in touch any time to set up your tour.

Do you have any other questions about cannabis Tissue Culture or how it can be used in your operations? Please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’d love to help.