On 10/13 there will be a free workshop on tissue culture cloning given by Bill Graham at Queens Hydroponic Centers for those interested in attending.

Rafael,
sounds interesting but a little too far for me.  It would be interesting to see any documentation they distribute.

This sounds very interesting. What time does it start?

Start time tbd, sorry that's all they have for now.

I would love to attend, but I'm way way south. I'm quite sure it'll be an informative workshop.

video it for us if you can Rafael or take down as many notes as possible :)

Where is the Queens Hydroponic Center? If the timing of lecture doesn't interfere with my work schedule I will likely attend.

Edit: Is this the hydroponic store located near Queens College? If so it's only 10 mins away from me.

Yeah its on the LIE Service road near Kissena Blvd.

That place is awesome, they have just about everything I could want there. When you find out the time of the lecture please let us know.

I sat in on this excellent lecture tonite by Bill Graham of Microclone. He made it clear that tissue cloning should eliminate, reduce or breed out fmv or other pathogens with a few attempts at cloning the same cutting, ie a few repetitions of the same clone. I am not able to explain the science behind it unfortunately but he did seem pretty certain about the chances of clearing up an infected cutting in a very short time. The kits are fairly affordable, in the $60-$80 range.

Rafael, I'm curious who the intended audience/market was for this technology (besides fig enthusiasts).  Is the main purpose to rid a cultivar of diseases?  I'm not sure what the advantage would be otherwise since propagation can usually be achieved more easily via traditional methods.

The kits I've found hover around 100-200 to pricey for me when theres a chance they all could fail. can you please tell me where I can find a kit for 60 or 80? 

Hi Rewton

Mr Graham is growing everything under the sun, he claims that almost everything sold in east coast nurseries was cloned and grown in the florida lab he used to run where he learned cloning. He had giant redwoods and orchids aplenty as samples. There may have been some stoners there as well. As for figs, I have heard that Edible Landscaping sells inexpensive virus free tissue culture figs so I thought this might be of interest, that is all. Not recommending it, just sharing.

Daniel

The basic starter kit was $60, I think you do need a few other items as well, the website of the lecturer is at

http://www.planttc.com


They sell their products at the website

Hi Rewton (post #12),
Imagine you're willing to sell 2000 trees come next season - you've signed the contract ... Go fetch cuttings for that... If you go tissue culture...
You need less genetic material to achieve the same final results - and that cuts costs at buying source plant time .
That would help as well have more consistent lots as less sources (and source trees) would be involved .

Other case: Imagine you developed the special fig . You've got just that one tree . You want to release the tree to make some (big big) bucks .
Tissue culture is the response to your lack of genetic material.
In general that is the main purpose of using tissue culture.

For small scales, of course, that is less interesting.

There's a lot of info available on YouTube regarding tissue culture.  It looks pretty involved.  Might be more for a commercial application?