Are Succulents Grown From Tissue Culture Bad/ Lesser Quality?

[@bobbiechinn9578]

Great video! I'm glad people have figured out how to do that it can and has made big differences in the plant world.

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

Thank you 🙂 TC is a gamechanger and it's now incredibly easy to build up stock for not a huge amount of money. I believe forcing mutations and variegation is also something that can be done as a part of culturing plants! It's so interesting!

[@jankent5677]

You introduced me to Titanopsis calcarea this morning and I am soooo grateful! What a unique little fella. I promptly ordered four off of ebay. I have grown a huge penchant for the odd ones of late - my Little Warty being at the top of the list. I had never heard of tissue culturing plants on this scale, and I am a Microbiologist!

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

That's awesome- you won't be disappointed 🙂 It also grows this cute yellow flower. You and me both- i cannot resist a strange succulent 😅. If you like T calcarea you may also find Faucaria tuberculosa interesting 😀 Plant TC has become a huge business. When i get the availability list it has hundreds of plants. I believe some food crops are now being multiplied this way!

[@CleoGravel]

Wow. Never new you could do something like that 😊very interesting 😊thanks for sharing 😊

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

It's pretty crazy- the scale of this is huge i can't even wrap my head around it 🤯😅 Thank you for watching 💚

[@jillianleblanc9370]

Thank you for sharing beautiful and amazing plants lovely collection beautiful succulents and cactus lovely

[@karenkmk4035]

Great insight into tissue culture.. I’m also intrigued how all the variegated plants are developed? I assumed a natural occurring variegation, then the plants are propagated. Ive heard some varigations are forced? Is this true? There seem to be so many varigations around lately..

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

Thank you 🙂There are ways of inducing variegation while the plants are in-vitro. I believe white and yellow var. can be achieved by introducing certain chemicals that kill off chlorophyll. I've also heard you can do it by giving plants antibiotics, but not sure how well this works. If a nursery is lucky enough to get a stable accidental mutation resulting in good variegation, the plant can be sent off for culturing. It's really interesting- i think i'll have to do a video on this! 😅

[@jhndr0nia]

​@@SucculentGrowingTips Since chlorophyll is a macromolecule that is synthesised the chloroplast, "killing it off" would rather lead to a plant that is temporally white but not variegated. I am myself not sure how vatiegation can be induced except for mutagenesis and hoping for variegated plants. Variegation is usually caused by the presence of normal, green, chlorophyll-containing cells together with mutated, white, chlorophyll-lacking cells. Depending how they are distributed throughout the meristem ("areas with stem cells"), the pattern on the leaves changes. In some cases transposons are involved which basically inactive the chloroplasts in some cells spontaneously and lead to a heterogenic mix of white and green cells in the plant

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

To be entirely honest my knowledge on inducing variegation is based on a bit of hearsay from fellow nursery owners but i do have a researcher friend who cultures cells, both human and plant at a university and she told me mutations (incl variegatio of all sorts, not just white) can be forced by exposure to temperature fluctuations, viruses, chlorophyll inhibitors etc. and while yes- it is more likely that the variegation will only be temporary, sometimes, especially when done in vitro, it can produce stable variegation. @@jhndr0nia

[@richarddoherty9856]

Wow, I would love to try and grow some succulents from TC, would you share where they can be brought from? Thank you.😊

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

It depends where you are but, most countries will have a TC lab or someone importing. Google Tissue Culture succulents and add the country you're in. It should give you a few options (make sure to go beyond page one as Googles' algorithm pushes the best websites further down for some reason). I'm in Australia and usually order from Flower Plant Technology or Majestic Young Plants. Also, you can't just order a couple, the minimum is around 250 plants per 1 variety. It's all very much wholesale and you may need to have a registered business to be able to buy. Hope this helps :)

[@mnoone6381]

Very interesting topic. Are there any European TC Labs that sell to individuals rather than nurseries? Thank you.

[@SucculentGrowingTips]

I'm afraid i'm not entirely sure.. But I don't think any of them would sell to individuals unless you're prepared to buy hundreds of plants of the same variety. The ones i deal with all have minimums, the lowest being 250 plants per variety. Some have a 10000 plant minimum. It would be difficult for them to only separate a few out and package them as their environment still needs to be sterile.. Sorry i couldn't help more.

[@mnoone6381]

@@SucculentGrowingTips Many thx for explaining about the minimum orders, etc. Enjoyed your video.