Prevent Transplant Shock: Acclimating Tissue Culture Plants
Most often tissue cultured plants die during the acclimatization stage and that’s where are lacking. Successfully acclimating your plants is the ability to transfer these plants from the laboratory where they were being taken care of to your environment while keeping your plants alive and healthy. When scientists grow plants in their labs, they take very good care of them by giving them all the necessary nutrients and exposing them to sterile conditions so that they can reach their highest growth levels. However, when cultured plants leave these laboratories, they must adapt to the natural world to survive. Therefore, they must be transplanted to a controlled environment for them to survive. In this article, we will focus on how to prevent transplant shocks by correctly acclimatizing tissue culture plants. First, let’s tell you more about the term acclimatization. This is the adaptation of plants to a new environment. One thing to note is that transferring tissue culture plants from the lab where they are being given everything and sending them to outside world will lead to difficulties adapting to temperature, light, and humidity of the outside world.
The difficulties of acclimatization
Tissue culture plants are cultured in a completely artificial environment and by this we mean artificial light. These plants also receive readymade nutrients which make them grow healthy and they are called mixotrophs. However, when these plants are taken to the natural environment, the plants need to adapt to the conditions of the natural environment and they become autotrophs. Mixotrophs and autotrophs have their differences which we are going to focus on. When it's comes to mixotrophs you realize that they thrive only under sterile conditions. Autotrophs on the other hand thrive in the natural environment. Nonetheless, mixotrophs can be converted to autotrophs and this works by exposing your mixotrophs to your natural environment for several hours of the day.
Acclimatizing your plants: what to do
There are many issues that affect the growth of tissue-cultured plants when exposed to the natural environment which includes physiological and anatomical deficiencies. It's essential to acclimatize tissue cultured plants and we are going to detail how the process works. The first thing to do is to make your plants become aware of your environment before you transplant them. This will allow them to get to know the environment where they will eventually establish their roots on. When transplanting in the greenhouse, ensure to clean and transfer the plantlets to a pot filled with inorganic nutrients. The different varieties of potting mixes you can find include pumice, peat, vermiculite, soil, sand, etc. You can prepare a potting mix using a combination of elements. When you prepare your mix, fill them in a tray, then poke a hole at the center of your mixture and insert your cultured plants.
The initial 14 days
For 2 weeks, tissue-cultured plants require high levels of humidity similar to the ones in which they were cultured. Most growers successfully achieve this by covering the plants with transparent plastic bags and putting small holes around the bags to facilitate respiration and keep them away from direct sun. The transparent bag also ensures the plants don’t get affected by direct sunlight which is detrimental because it causes loss of water for the plants. During acclimatization, platelets often stress due to the change in environment and nutrients from organic to inorganic. However gradual exposure to the natural environment will activate the plants’ ability to do photosynthesis and prepare them against low humidity. Nowadays we have specially engineered rooms that are meant to maintain high humidity for plants while providing sufficient light and CO2 for photosynthesis at the same time. Growers can also ensure the survival of their plants during the acclimatization stage by providing an environment to plantlets, during the multiplication and rooting stage, similar to the greenhouse environment.
Foshan Youngplants: Your Trusted Supplier of High-Quality Tissue Culture Plants
Young Plants is a leading global biotech enterprise specializing in plant tissue culture and premium seedling production. We supply wholesale tissue culture plants and plug plants to both local and worldwide markets. Todays, we are producing different kinds of wholesale tissue-cultured plants varieties such as Aglaonema, Anthurium, Dieffenbachia, Philodendron, Epipremnum, Scindapsus, Monstera, Spathiphyllum, Syngonium , Alocasia, Colocasia, ect.
