in general we use different concentration of agar during tissue culture to support the explant. But, can we use sterilized sand instead of agar to support our explant.
Please provide your valuable suggestions.
Thank you.
I haven't tried it but a trainee in my lab uses glass beads with liquid MS medium for Arabidopsis culture prior to imaging.
Moreover we currently use perlite with Fahreus medium for Medicago culture in the aim ti make them nodulate.
I think quatrz sand is ok as it is non-reactive, but I think the best would be for you to try with easy plants and let us know.
can you maintain the hardness/jelly property of sand i think no... i have never heard about using sand for PTC... hope this will work ... all the best.. we want to know your results...
I don't think sand will work, as the nutrition and hormones we add to the culture medium stays for a longer period and frequent sub-culturing is managed, but in sand the problem may rouse with it porous nature and the inability to provide a condition like agar. However i have observed that we can use filter papers and sand in combination to get approximate toward agar property.
I think this would be depend on your explant properties. If your explant is suited with sand u can use it but still need lot of changes and modification.
Best of Luck.
I agree with Shaligram Sharma.
If you want to provide a support to the explant, you can also use sterilized tissue paper and add the liquid medium as required to keep the tissue paper damp enough. This has work for my experiment.
I would like to know the result if ever you are using sand.
Best of Luck.
Sand can work as an adherent media gel, and over floating media having essential nutrients will work for plant tissue regeneration and growth. All different types of epiphytes can be grown by using this new method. ,
1) Agar keeps liquid medium up 99-98,5% of total weight, sand can keep water up to 25% of total weight.
2) you will not use the sand for second time if not purify it easy till biotechnological grade. - finally, it will be more expensive comparing to agar.
Dear Aravind,
You can use Silica gel. It is used in that cases where bacteria use agar also as carbon source. However you have to standardized the protocol
Agar is used to solidify the medium. It also prevents hyperhydricity by regulating water potential of the medium. Sand certainly will not serve the purpose. Further, the pore size of the agar matrix and sand mixture will affect transport of ions. Inconsistent results in terms of morphogenesis may be expected more with sand.
I had used liquid media for induction calli, not for regenetation. If you use sand for a regeneration medium it will be liquid and calli or explants will sink into medium. It is not good. But you should arrange the amount of sand not to sink calli or explant into medium. Regards.
Dear Aravind,
Yes, we can use silica sand in micropropagation. May article may help you for your work.
Thanks with regards,
Aloka,
UKZN, S.Africa.
I agree with Alex Ignatov.The moisture in sand must be kept high. Smooth moovements also must be applly for no mixing when the product is young and haven't stabilizised yet.
Dear Aravind,
Yes we can autoclave it (sand), in autoclavable polybag.
With regards,
Aloka
We can use it for further propagation, But this technique is more suitable in developing countries, Also we need to autoclave the soil.
We have ever used the mixture of sand and ager for root regeneration，and we got a better result than that of ager.But I am not sure if it works for shoot regeneration or calli induction of other plants .
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