Coming events
Gem Clearance
Nov , 14, 15 & 16 2008
Carnivorous plant and Bromeliad Show
Nov, 29 & 30, 2008
Department
Links
Link to our new Gem and Fossil site
Crystal-world.com
The Laboratory
Main index Page *** Ordering Information *** Orchids Main Page
{Cymbidiums} {Miltonias} {Odontoglossum Alliance} {Australian Native Dendrobiums} {Nursery Information}
Orchid World operates a large laboratory facility to supply new stock to the nursery. The laboratory employs 2 to 3 full time staff and produces all our Orchid and Carnivorous plant requirements. The laboratory consists of the entry which acts as an airlock to prevent insects and pathogens entering the lab and houses the dishwasher and wash basins, shoe and clothes racks. The next room is the store room and office, this room is for the computer, paper work and office area, fume cabinet for working with dangerous chemicals and a class 2 laminar flow cabinet used as a plant treatment area where dangerous chemicals are handled. The class two laminar flow hood and the fume cabinet keep all dangerous fumes away from staff and vent all the fumes out of the laboratory. The next room is the main work area that houses three laminar flow hoods. Laminar flow hoods are partly sealed work areas that are constantly kept clean by flow of air that is filtered so well that no living organism is capable of passing through the filters, this is critical as any infection that enters the area can contaminate and eventually destroy the work that is being performed in the cabinet at the time. From the work area are 4 rooms. The first is a small room housing the Autoclave, a large chamber like a giant pressure cooker used to sterilize all the bottles and media used in the process of growing plants in-vitro. The next room is the kitchen where all the chemicals are stored and medias are mixed up and weighted. The next door is the main grow room stacked with 6 levels of shelves packed from floor to ceiling with bottles of plants all growing plants in Vitro. Each shelf is lit with florescent lights that burn for 16 hours per day to simulate sunlight. The final room is a smaller grow room similar to the main room.
Orchids are produced by seed like most plants but orchid seed is extremely small and requires extremely specialized conditions to germinate. A seed pod of an orchid could contain from 20,000 to 100,000 seeds, often as fine as dust and these seeds must find a perfect position in nature to germinate. If one seed from a pod survives the plant has done well and has served its purpose in life. Unfortunately man with all his clever ways could not manage to improve the success rate with orchid seed germination until the 1920's when the first seeds were germinated invitro by ?? Knudson. This technique suddenly meant that seed pods that would normally yield a handful of expensive seedlings could now yield thousands of seedlings. This revolution suddenly made orchids far more available and substantially cheaper. Invitro germination and subsequent growing of plants meant that seedlings could now be raised in their thousands and hence huge amounts of orchid hybrids were quickly created.
Seed production is the main method of producing orchids and up until the 1950's was the only method of producing orchids commercially. Seed raising is the preferred method of production with species and also is the only way of creating new orchids by crossing two different plants to create new and exciting forms. Once a new seedling has shown itself to be desirable it can become quite valuable. Orchids can take a long time to multiply so divisions of these selected orchids were impossible to acquire and if available they would often have huge prices. In the mid 1950's a new method called Mericloning was developed. Mericloning is achieved by removing a piece of tissue from an existing plant and using in-vitro techniques multiplying that tissue to create thousands of new plants. In a few short years orchids that were worth thousands of dollars suddenly became available for a fraction of the original price and prices for orchids came within the reach of the average persons income.
In the early 60's a further technique was developed in the laboratory that doubled the chromosome count of an orchid, all plants have 2 pairs (2N or diploid) of chromosomes, with the aid of a chemical treatment these chromosomes were doubled (4N or tetraploid). The effect of doubling the chromosomes is to create bigger and better flowers and plants. Tetraploid orchids do occur in nature very rarely and over the past 50 years of orchid breeding a few orchids have stood out to be of a very high quality and exceptionally good breeder, these were later found to be chance tetraploids.
The three processes, seed raising, mericloning and ploid shifting are undertaken in our laboratory.
Main index Page *** Ordering Information *** Orchids Main Page
{Cymbidiums} {Miltonias} {Odontoglossum Alliance} {Australian Native Dendrobiums} {Nursery Information}
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