Cannabis Tissue Culture by Mad Scientist

Very interesting. I always wanted to try tissue culture myself but have never had the time . I work for the man to much unfortunately .
Definitely here to learn from this whatever I can .
Cheers and thank you . @MadScientist

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Hey @MadScientist nice work!
Any updates on how this is going for you? I’m getting pretty close to ordering a kit from microclone myself…

https://microclone.com/

Nice to see someone else crazy enough to take on this kind of weirdness. The promise of keeping a supply of sterile backups of my strains in virtual stasis is just too amazing not to try, nevermind all the other crazy benefits. Hope it’s working out well for you.

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So, WTF happened???

I am really interested in cannabis Tissue Culture and this stub is disheartening to say the least. What is the current state of the art?

If OG doesn’t know, who does?
-Grouchy

@ReikoX? @Worcestershire_Farms @Papalag… @ MadScientist

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Madscientist got banned. There is one member here doing it, but I can’t remember who. I got sidetracked with dealing with my HpLVd issue.

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Interested in it my self but really just investigating

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@ReikoX and @GrouchyOldMan, think @scjedi has been talking about it lately.

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I do it professionally and teach classes locally. I am happy to answer most questions. www.synergy-genetics.com

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Do you offer services to hobby growers? Do you do any meristem tissue culture? Also, do you do the procedure in a legit laboratory or in a tent/home?

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I offer tissue culture services, period. Pests and diseases typically do not care who is tending to the plant. I really dont care either. A sick plant is a sick plant. If someone has something they care about then they can see the value in the cost of remediation, however, I find that most people do not want to pay what it costs to fix “their 20 year-old OG” and will continue to care for, or pass around their diseased plant. My recommendation is to have your plant(s) tested first so you (and I) know what is wrong. I am happy to take that part on for an additional cost.

Yes. It is time-consuming and therefore expensive. It also does not always work so my pricing reflects all of it.

I am not sure what you mean by a “legit lab”. Do you mean are we ISO certified? No. Am I boiing shit in a 500W microwave? No. This is not a $100,000+ lab but I have about 20 racks into getting this lab to where it is at today. It is not your cousin’s tent lab. It is a multi-room space that is approximately 450 square feet, not including a 250 square foot nursery. I primarily use this as a teaching lab.

Anyone willing to travel to the Sacramento area is welcome.

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So you can test for hplvd, cucumber mosaic virus etc.
I saw this post from potent phonics steve

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I do not do qt-pcr, I farm out viroid panels locally.

If a client provides a positive test result then I act accordingly, otherwise and test in and then test out.

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Greetings @SCJedi, Thank you for the details of your services, I’m sure more than a few of us will be interested.

Would you be willing to detail out the process and estimated costs for performing a complete TC on a sample, from a healthy tissue slice to rooted plant?

I realize there are likely many options along the way but perhaps you can illuminate a typical scenario to give us some idea of your services?

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Send a rooted, tested plant (or I outsource testing)

If it’s clean I veg it out, take cuttings and I run it through media trials to determine what is optimal. Three stages: initiation, multiplication, and rooting. (Acclimating the plant is on you) This typically take 3-6 months.

If it IS NOT clean then I veg it, take cuttings and excise only the meristem domes from apical tips. This takes a very long time to grow a plant again and can take up to a year. Testing should be done in different stressed environments so it helps to hang onto the new plants for a while and test it out 2-3x.

I can’t tell you how long each step takes because every cultivar is different. For example, some root in 2 weeks and other root in 2 months.

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Hey @SCJedi,
Thanks for the prompt and helpful reply.
Actually, the helpful part wasn’t that helpful, probably due to my inexperience with the field. I didn’t understand half of what you said. but I was still really impressed with the certainty with which you said it.

I did appreciate the promptness tho, it impressed me that you are a serious professional who intends to build a business doing tissue culture.

So, good on ya, building a business is a challenge no matter what the field, it takes brains and a bit of courage to pull it off. And tissue culture isn’t a trivial pursuit!

I’ve worked in a cleanroom lab and done water sample cultures, coliform counts and such, so I have an inkling of the lab you described above. It’s a big deal to get that right and it sounds like you’ve done it. That is very interesting indeed. Time to look for customers, right?

Well, you’ve got a receptive audience here, potential customers even. I wonder if you’d be willing to take the time to dive a little deeper into what you do and how you do it? Maybe explain it terms even we civilians can understand.

I’m not suggesting you divulge any trade secrets, more along the lines of letting us know what it would be like to actually provide you a sample and pay your market rate to produce viable plants.

Here’s a specific scenario for your comments:
Let’s pretend that I have access to seeds, clones and a mother plant from a rare and valuable legendary cannabis strain and I’d like you to create new generation viable plants from a tissue culture sample that I can provide. Money is AN object, but it’s not THE object. This is a paying gig.

  • All my samples reside in a typical grubby, non-sterile grow room, so you’ll need to clean it and test it in preparation. Include that in your cost.

  • I’d want you to veg it and perform a meristem tissue culture then test it for viability. You are also a grower, right?

  • The deliverable would be rooted growing Photo, M/F plants handed off to me or my agent at an agreed upon meeting.

  • I’d also want you to maintain the successful tissue culture in your lab for further exploitation. What would be my cost per plant?

I’ll await my more educated OG brethren to help fine tune that Work Order, but in the meantime I guess the question is whether you’d take on that job and how much would you charge from sample to viable plant?

Can you guarantee a viable plant as a deliverable? Can you produce additional plants as needed? Can you maintain the culture for an extended timeframe?

There are a lot of very smart folks here on OG and many of them are really interested in Tissue Cultured cannabis, but, AFAIK, none of them have done it themselves as of yet.

Your claim, if I understand it, is that you have achieved that goal, so let us know how we can make use of your service. Look, I’m not rich, but I can imagine signing up for a four-digit invoice just to be the first kid on my block. Potential customer?

If you are willing, let’s proceed. Take that scenario above and run with it, get specific for our benefit.

Best,
-Grouchy
@ReikoX, @Papalag @Shanti-ri @grief @Gpaw

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This is what I will do. I will compose a reply offline and start my own tissue culture thread to respond to your reply there. I typically do not post pricing publicly but am happy to give people a ball-park range of what general service types might cost. I used the “20-year-old OG” example because that was a conversation last month with some local folks that balk at the prices. I like to keep things simple. It costs a lot because it takes a lot of time and effort.

My intent is to be as transparent and as informative as possible. So with that said I will also reach out to @LemonadeJoe to question and clarify the idea of soliciting forum members as potential customers. I do not want to be banned so if I need to be a donor/sponsor to share information and/or solicit business I will leave that up to the administration of the forum to decide.

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By any chance do you have any reviews of people who had tissue culture done by you?

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That seems like a reasonable approach @SCJedi. Please tag me when you post your thread.

I sincerely hope I haven’t breached any OG rules by posing this hypothetical, it certainly wasn’t my intention.

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What strain did you contract that from , I’m just curious because I’ve heard quite a few people having problems with it again recently

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ICookies (LED Seedz cut).

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So as you probably already know it’s very expensive and time consuming to remediat hplvd and it is also not always successful without temperature therapy first.

If you have other plants in your garden they are at risk. It’s time for a cost-benefit analysis to decide if it is worth keeping around.

If it’s replaceable then just cull it and use best practices to Virkon S your tools or flame sterilize them. (Everyone should be doing this anyway) 99% of the time I use flame or glass bead sterilizers and use a new tool for each plant cut.

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