The major ingredients used in tissue culture of plants, are agar (a naturally occurring substance, that we often call "pond scum"), enzymes (A protein that acts as a catalyst, affecting the rate at which chemical reactions occur in cells) and vitamins. These are combined into a gel-like substance, which is the host for the plant tissue that is to be multiplied into new clones.
Chances are, that some of the food you obtained from your local supermarket, came from plants produced by tissue culture.
Take heart! It's not a process conceived by some evil scientists and designed to destroy every living thing on earth, in fact, it's a relatively simple "cookbook" process that you can do in your own kitchen, by following a few rules of cleanliness and sterilization of instruments, to prevent contamination.
It's the same process as rooting cuttings of your favorite plants, except on a much larger scale.
It has been determined that genetic variability (somaclonal variations) are generated by the plant cell culture itself, during tissue culture, and results in clones that we call "Mutations." It can also occur naturally in the garden or in wild populatios and results in some of our favorite plant cultivars!
Rb

I've often considered tissue culture to be little or no different than taking cuttings -- it is essentially the same concept/process but on a microscopic level. I would suggest the more trying question for a true "organic gardener" is whether or not we should be cloning plants.

In any case, I have no problems with tissue culture -- without it we would have far fewer Hosta and Heuchera, which are some of my favourite plants.

As for some of problems with the newer Echinacea, I believe there are many variables playing a part, one of which may be poor methods and/or infected stock at one of the t/c labs.

there is so much wrong in that first paragraph ... i think your basic presumption is that TC is gene splicing or something ....

in a nutshell .... TC is simple ... using hosta as an example...

they take a bud.. the size of your little finger nail ... and sterilize the heck out of it ....

they place in agar [a petry dish].. and add a hormone that causes the dormant buds within the single bud to activate ... it is the same hormone which would cause a hosta in the ground.. to have more buds every year ...

once those new buds.. hundreds of them ... get about an 1/4 inch big... they slice them off the starting bud .... and put them in a mason jar of agar .. that now has a rooting hormone, so the little plants will root ... and place it under lights ...

that is how you turn one bud into thousands of ex-plants ...

they are NOT mutants... there are no mystery chemicals.. there is no gene splicing ...

the TC IS A PART OF THE ORIGINAL literally ... its simply a replication process .... it is NOT a creation process ...

frankly.. there is NOTHING to test.. since it is a duplicate of the original ...

what is hard about it all is getting the process proper.. too much of the first hormone.. and the plant keeps dividing.. too little of the root hormone.. and it never seems to grow roots ... balancing it all out is the hard part

the biggest problem in the hosta world.. was the TC'ers selling them too small ..

once the process is perfected .. and the plants properly grown out.... it is all fine ... and can reduce the price significantly .... back in the day.. if a great new hosta only put out 2 new buds a year.. you would have to wait 10 years to get a piece.. and you would pay $250 for it... today... you can buy the same plant for $15 in a year ...

of course.. its all much more complicated than my simplified explanation... but when you boil it all down.. that is it in a nutshell ...

you can even.. rather safely.. do it at home ... go figure on that ... wherein the sterile environment is your biggest hurdle for success ... see link below

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I've never seen strange things like these distorted blooms, etc. from rooting cuttings of a plant. I saw an article in which they said the Big Sky Series was created using too few "meristems." I have no idea what that means.

I do know that the plants from AB Cultivars don't have the problems. Do they just use a better tissue culture lab?

Is it possible that the genetics of some cultivars or species don't work in tissue culture as well as others?

I know they use hormones in tissue culture too. One is used to make the plants multiply and then another is later used to make them take root. After all of that...the growers are using synthetic chemicals like Configure to make them fill up a pot faster. Some of the things they use have some serious warning labels. What is all of this doing to the plants we pay so much to grow? Take Tiki Torch for example...The second year it looks like a plant that was just planted this year. Only 1 out of 4 of mine returned.

I just think this process is stunting and causing deformity in many of these plants and it needs to be looked into by someone.

I'm not someone who has no experience in this. I've tried tissue culture before. I saw the warning labels on the chemicals involved. It is not the same as rooting a cutting. I think hostas are no plant to compare to an Echinacea. Hostas are much easier to propagate than an Echinacea. You can take one Hosta and chop it into over 30 plants in a single season. I know. I've done it.

I think there is something they are doing to Echinaceas that is more involved than in hostas. I don't know a single person who has tissue cultured Echinaceas at home. I was going to take a class to do this, but they said Echinaceas were too complicated and I would have to choose something easy like African Violets or Hostas.

Here's a pdf file that discusses the problems in tissue culture of the Big Sky Series.

This process isn't perfect. Case in point...the Big Sky Series, Sunset (discontinued because of problems with tissue culture).

I've contacted Dan Heims about this before at Terra Nova. He said these plants were 'Pushed too hard in tissue culture.' They've even had problems out of some cultivars in tissue culture as well. I think they had trouble out of their dwarf Echinacea called 'Little Giant.'

Here's a link to the article...

http://www.rhs.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/4FC9EEAF-1460-460A-87FD-6313867225DE/0/Echinacea.pdf

You'll have to copy and paste in browser. The link wouldn't work the other way.

No clue what the deal is with tissue culture, but in my own garden I tend to stick with the old ironsides tried-and-true varieties of things (say, White Swan or Magnus coneflower, for example) because I know these plants will perform with little problem. It seems when I try newer cultivars of things, a lot of times they peter out (not always, but often).

So, what's going on there? Is it that newer varieties are on the market that have just not proven themselves (read: marketing hype sells plants that ultimately turn out to be duds) or is mad science at play? Like I said, I truly have no clue...

I don't know mxk3. Someone said that Terra Nova trials their plants for 3 years. However, everyone I know with Echinacea 'Mac 'N Cheese' is having problems with it not growing. How could it pass the trial and then fail in everyone's garden? Makes no sense to me unless they aren't really doing these trials. As a consumer we have no way of knowing what they really did. They could say they tested the plant for 10 years and we'd never know any better. LOL.

Here's another question to think about. Anyone with a science degree was taught about the principle of "hybrid vigour" -- but is it true? I think in some cases it is, but not always.

It's definitely not in Echinaceas. LOL. The only plants with vigour seem to be selections of the originals, such as the double blooming Pink and white ones.

I just got back from one of my nursery haunts, and as I was hunting through the bench for a "White Swan" I saw some pots of "Mac-n-Cheese" - what absolutely miserable looking plants!! Tiny little puny things with a couple of leaves while next to those pots were lush specimens of "Magnus", "White Swan", and some other cultivers, the names of which escape me. So, something definitely seems to be up that cultivar...

I can spot a dud Echinacea easily now. LOL. I got a good education from the Big Sky Mutants!

"I can spot a dud Echinacea easily now." How do you tell? I have only grown the old standard. I have seen some of the others in nurseries, but after reading the many threads on them have been afraid to buy. If I knew what to look for that might help.

I have not had any luck, yet, with TC-ing Echinacea. It has totally eluded me....

As regards to 'mutants', many of the newer hosta varieties are in fact mutants created in TC vats which are multiplied or sale by further TC. This is not to say that there is anything bad about them, as most of the old varieties were mutants created in nature.

Mutants occur in TC fairly commonly and are generally rogued out as the plants are raised to production size. A fair number of these are generally kept and evaluated as for improvements over the base stock but most are destroyed in the long run. The reason they occur so commonly is that TC uses such small explants to form each plant that only a very small number of cells must mutate to give a totally mutant plant. If the Big Sky series has a fairly high number of non conforming plants entering the marketplace, then it is a problem of poor control in the growing out step that is at fault, not the TC itself, these should be caught as the plants are being up-sized.

George

I have since changed my mind about this process. I do understand why it is necessary. I think I have just had some bad luck with plants I bought being mutants. It's just frustrating when you buy a plant and it doesn't match the plant tag.

The problem with Echinaceas from tissue culture is that the plants must bloom before you know whether they are true to form. Case in point...Echinacea "Pink Poodle." I bought 3 of these and only one of them has the correct blooms. The others look like "Double Deckers." I have heard the same thing from many others. The only way you can know you have the problem is to plant these and wait for blooms. This is a serious problem because none of the producers of these plants let them flower before selling them. They just send them out without making sure they match the original plants.