For those of you that are getting into crossing, stabilising a pheno or just want to go back to ms to shake things up a bit you’re in the right place, these 2 simple methods are guaranteed success every time for a clean plate from fresh fruit, no transfers required, the only time I’ve had to transfer using this method is with wild fruits and even then it’s rare, from tub grows or similar I literally cannot remember the last time I had an ms plate contam, so let’s get started with these stupid simple methods 👍
CLEAN STREAKING WITH SWABS
Easy peasy, obviously make sure you have sterile swabs, I personally make my own and buy cheap cotton tips with compressed paper sticks, they sterilise well in a jar and being paper seem to get through customs better than wooden ones when shipping overseas, just cut one end off with heavy duty scissors, fill a jar and sterilise with your next lot of agar, I then buy small autoclave pouches to package them after use.

 Now ideally you’d want a grow that isn’t contaminated and hasn’t been messed with too much, try to avoid taking the lid off unnecessarily and make sure your conditions are dialed in so you’re not spraying it and introducing more contaminates from your environment and dirty pie hole, clean is the dream, although I’m a fiddler and it hasn’t effected me much at all. Now choose your fruit and take it to your SAB or flow hood, no need to clean it or anything just maintain sanitary technique at all times, always clean hands before getting a fresh swab etc, now take your first swab and ideally you’d want to find some gills that are pressed together or where there’s been less exposure to air currents, now gently insert the swab between the gills slowly rotating in one direction only while you move the length of the gills back and forth, now get your mind out of the gutter and replace that swab in its packet or pouch making sure to avoid contact with the next swab, if you buy pre-made swabs then I’ll leave that dexterous conundrum for you to figure out, now get the next swab, this will be the streaker and insert back into the exact same gills you just swabbed, gently rotating as you go same as before, take it to your plate and streak, I typically do 3 lines and rotate the swab as I gently drag over the agar slightly altering the angle with each line so that every surface of the swab makes contact. I’ll normally swab the fruit again with that same swab before packaging it with the first, no waste here. So what you’ve done is effectively clean the gills of contaminates with your first pass to get a clean streak with your second and that’s it! So easy it’s dumb

 Some of these plates are from the method below but I’ll add more as I get them in the next week or so (:
STREAKING WITH GILL FRAGMENT
The basic theory is to dissect a small piece of gill from as close to the cap as possible thereby avoiding possible contaminates that accrue through the process of a grow on the outer exposed edges of the gills then streaking the gill over agar to produce a clean ms plate, I’ll outline the process I’ve developed below which is stupidly simple but I’d suggest making sure your cloning skills are up to scratch beforehand as it’s essentially the same process with a slightly different end game.
What I do first is tear from the base of the stipe upwards so that it also splits the cap and you have 2 halves of the same shroom to play with, I then cut diagonally downward starting from just inside the cap to about 1/2 way or less if possible into the gills, then the same again at an opposite angle creating a V shape, from there I cut side to side through the cap so I have a little triangle of gills and a piece of cap to reinforce and stabilise it, this is extremely important as without it the piece of gill will disintegrate . Here’s a basic diagram of the process
 Now when I make that final cut through the cap I angle it a little downwards towards the gills, from there it’s a matter of working with what you’ve got, I’ve had the piece simply lift up with a single gill attached, sometimes a couple which doesn’t matter, sometimes I have to slide my blade under the gill and lever it up so it tears where I made the incision in the cap but once it’s separated make sure it doesn’t make contact with any part of the shroom where it can potentially pick up cross contamination, then I simply stab my blade through the cap section marked below in red.
 From there I drag the gill lightly over the agar (I make my agar fairly soft so there’s more chance of spores sticking) use your common sense and drag away from the sharp edge of the scalpel so you don’t cut through the tissue mid drag or save yourself potential trouble altogether and sterilise some tweezers and use that instead, again making sure to grip the cap tissue only. Here’s a plate I streaked a few days ago, no pattern, I simply use the gill like a brush painting back and forth over the centre of the plate.
 Not the best image but you get the idea. Here’s another

Yes, there’s definitely varieties and species this simply won’t be practical for, most small pans for example but if you use your common sense and practice you’ll find it becomes extremely easy to do and saves the bother of getting/making swabs. There you have it folks, let me know if there’s anything I didn’t make clear or further questions you might have and I’ll endeavour to clarify.
Here’s some ms grows using those techniques, well, all my ms grows are from the above techniques







Edited by 3.A.M (03/07/25 04:42 AM)
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