Tissueculture

Tissueculture transforms the Tree Fruit Industry, I’m Susan Allen welcome to the Fruit Grower Report. When a farmer wants to plant an orchard they order their trees often years in advance from root stocks that are grafted then overwintered in cold storage before being shipped. 10-40% of these trees die after planting and of the ones that survive 10-20% end up not be genetically what the farmers ordered. Dr. Amit Dhingra is an Associate Professor of Genomics and Biotechnology at the Washington State University at WSU and has developed a soil free propagating method that speeds up this process while ensuring genetic trueness. A subject of his TED Talk. Dhingra: So we developed a solution to this problem. It’s called Tissueculture. Tissueculture is basically a process of growing and multiplying plants in these clean containers where it is supported by a nutrient material that contains everything the plant needs to grow. With this process what we can do is multiply plants three to five-fold in three to five weeks. But he didn’t stop there,Dhingra: We actually combined that with greenhouse process where we could actually compress three to four years worth of growth in about one year. The result is a robust very big tree. A tree that would normally take ten years to reach this size and is now ready to bear fruit. Also, his genetic mapping ensures each tree is true to it’s true genetic makeup.Dhingra: Thereby providing complete peace of mind to the farmer who is planting those