Hi, I have problem to sterilize freshwater plants (Anubias, Bucephalandra). I used chlorine salts and ethanol. I got contaminations. I think AgNO3 could works. Do you have any other protocols for sterilization?
Dear Bohuš Kubala the literature is plenty of desinfection protocols. You must addapt them to your conditions. There're some key factors that you must to consider. (1) Explant: select a explant source with the lowest posible contamination. (2) Desinfection agent(s): depending of contamination of explant, you should select a suitable substance (or physical method); in some cases combining some of them it's necessary. (3) Desinfection treatment: it's important to reach a point in which your protocol remove as many as contaminant you can without killing the explant. Also important, don't subestimated none step, all of them are critical. Good luck.
Here's a basic protocol I've used in the past for plant samples
5-20% bleach (need to optimize for your tissue) with 0.5% detergent (triton or tween or even dish soap), incubate with gentle agitation 2-10 minutes (you'll need to optimize this step too). Then rise 5 times with sterile water.
Surface sterilization is a tricky process in tissue culture; if HgCl2 is allowed in your place, optimize HgCl2 (0.1%) treatment from 3 - 6 min, Followed by 3-5 times sterile distilled water wash under laminar air flow conditions. If you find any fungal contamination, use Bavastine (0.2-1 %) 10-20min. You have to optimize both Bavastine and HgCl2. If the HgCl2 treatment is more means, the explant will die.