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royer9864 said:
i am going to leave this thread open due to good info but if you are going to use it to plug your thread then i will re-lock it.

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Una said:
I can not reveal the recipe but if you are interested in cactus tissue culture this document will give some very usefull tips.

http://plant-tc.coafes.umn.edu/listserv/2000/log0010/msg00077.html

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    * Subject: cacti recepy
    * From: "R. Wellens" <rwellens@ZEELANDNET.NL>
    * Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 19:43:42 +0200
    * Reply-To: Plant Tissue Culture <PLANT-TC@TC.UMN.EDU>
    * Sender: Plant Tissue Culture <PLANT-TC@TC.UMN.EDU>

Dear Diana,

There is no such thing as a cactus recepy; there is a huge diversity within
the cactaceae and almost each different one asks for a different approach.
In general (very general!) most species will grow on a 1/2 MS or 1/2 B5
medium supplemented with BA in concentrations varying from 0.1 to 10 mg/l.
Some cacti are extremely hard to propagate, for instance the cold-hardy ones
from North-America (Sclerocactus, Pediocactus etc.). So are cacti like
Ariocarpus, Aztekium etc, the slow growers from Mexico.
Relatively easy are most (not all!!) of the Rebutia's, Mammillaria's,
Gymnocalycium's etc.
Normally they are multiplied using areole activation. This can be done on
the medium described above and is sometimes enhanced by culture in the dark
for 2-3 weeks.
You can take pieces of cactus with at least 3-4 areoles and cultivate them
in the dark for 3 weeks on the described medium.
When you cannot start from a sterile (seedling) culture and must start with
an adult plant you will find it hard to desinfest. Normally if that happens
we decide to cut off the biggest spines and sterilize only the top meristem.
We use a 2% bleach for a relatively long time (1 hour or more) and shake the
culture very frequently. Sometimes we add an dropp of dish-washingsoap to
this or you can use a drop of Tween. You still might find fungal infections,
even after a long sterilization. But once you have a single clean cactus you
can easily start the multiplicationprocess with areole activation, although
you the hard-to-do ones mentioned above will ask a lot of time and effort to do so.
Rooting is mostly not a big problem, but again, it is a problem for some species.
Rooting for easy species happens on plain 1/2MS without any auxins, but in
individual cases an auxin like IBA might be helpful.
A main problem in producing cati is hyperhydricity or vitrification.
This can be reduced by using vessels or jars that have air-filtering
capacity, not to much because then they dry out.
So once you know what type of cactus you are going to multiply you will have
to develop its own perfect protocol, which can be based on this information.
However, it is not complete, there are a few articles in which specific
cacti were produced with specific techniques.
Callus culture or somatic embryogenesis is so far not studied by us and is
scarcely found in literature with little success.
I hope this will help you, you can also see some literature on different species.
Success with your productions.

Robert Wellens
Succulent Tissue Culture

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