Technology Description
- Plant tissue cultures are supposedly aseptic. It is now established that tissue cultures could harbour diverse bacteria in non-obvious form.
- Indexing procedure facilitates the detection of covert and endophytic bacteria in plant tissue cultures and to cull such cultures, thereby avoiding the risk of cross contamination from hazardous organisms.
- It involves a 3-step culture indexing for the detection of culturable bacteria and take timely action to maintain the cultures active and healthy.
Products and By- products
NA
Technology Benefits
- Allows the timely action on minimizing the losses from microbial contamination.
- Also improves the predictability and dependence on tissue culture protocols.
- Widely useful for the cultures meant for export market and in vitro gene banks.
- Serves as a tool verify the freedom from hazardous microorganisms while undertaking culture cleansing
Target segment /End User Profile
- Tissue culture units
- Diagnostics laboratories
- Quality assurance
- Quarantine agencies
Market potential
- Helps the general tissue culture industry, and in particular those agencies / firms involved in export of tissue cultures or TC plants.
Investment Required
- Investment in the form of bacteriological media and culture plates; May cost about Rs. 20-50 for testing one culture. Cost can be reduced by indexing a number of cultures in a plate.
Expected Returns/Profit
- Microbial contamination is the most serious limiting factor in tissue culture production units. Safeguards against unexpected loss of culture due to microbial contamination
- Savings from the avoidance of loss of precious cultures which other wise could have cascading effect on the production and timely supply.
- A typical example is the salvaging / revival of 3x watermelon cultures after 10 years of culture initiation. 15 year old culture is being maintained now with good multiplication rates.
NB: This facility can also be extended as paid service to interested firms