Contract plant propagation by tissue culture

• You send us the starting material (seeds, whole plant, cuttings, or rhizomes).
• We use our technical skills to initiate your starting material. Meaning, we successfully introduce your plant into tissue culture at no cost to you.*
• Please note that it can take from 1 to 12 months (depending on degree of difficulty) to initiate you plant successfully into tissue culture.
• Once the plant is successfully initiated, we will work on multiplication and rooting of your plant.
• As a rule of thumb, it takes about 12 months from successfully initiating your plant into tissue culture, to dispatching your first batch, after which we can start to dispatch your plants on a regular basis as per agreement.
• We have a high success rate of putting most ornamental, forestry and medicinal plants into tissue, and currently have contracts for various varieties of bromeliads, cordylines, dracaena, edible gingers, ornamental gingers, calathea, aglonema, Australian natives, agave, nandina, ctenanthe, caladiums, maranta, tacca, colocacia, medicinal plants, and biofuel plants, to name a few.
• With most contract propagation, our relationship with you, our valued customer is different from that of buyers in that it is of a longer standing nature and relies more heavily on trust and mutual understanding.
• In keeping with this drift, provided your order is over 10,000 plants per year to maintain cost–effectiveness, we offer this service at no charge to you. What’s more, the greater quantities you order, the lower your cost per plant.
• We have a strong work ethic and a strict code of conduct, which means the plant material you provide, will only be propagated for you, and will not be supplied to anyone else.
• Please feel free to contact us with your query and we will be happy to supply you with the relevant information.

• We put your plant into tissue culture at for no cost to you, provided your order is over 10,000 plants per year*
• You can give us your plant material to put into tissue without worrying about quarantine restrictions or costly DAFF inspection fees, especially if you need to split your deliveries over the year
• Low or no mortality since transit time from our lab to your greenhouse is minimal
• Most importantly, if you are new to tissue culture or are a small grower without the facility to deflask, we can deflask your plants for you at a reasonable rate and supply plugs instead of in vitro plants
• Being a local, medium sized establishment, we deal directly with you, and you are welcome to drop in to take a look at how your plant is performing in tissue.

We used to carry out bulk production for many regular nursery plants where our usual selling price started from $0.79 per plant. These plants are high volume low margin plants. We did that for many years. But given steady increase in all costs especially labour costs, we are slowly moving towards our specialty. We are now concentrating on more exotic and specialty high value tropical plants where our tissue culture price starts from $2.00 per plant. And with the selected range of plants we are introducing, we find ourselves booked for many of our high value plants throughout the year. Over the years we have developed many contacts across the World and now have exclusive tie up with 2 top American and 1 Dutch licensing companies to push their high value patented ornamental plant varieties in Aus/NZ market. Along with them we are working with many Australian nurseries to put their high value plants in TC.

Given that our pricing will start from $2.00+gst onwards per tc plant, it would be only viable to use our service on any your high value plants. Plants will be supplied in vitro.

Please feel free to call us and chat with our friendly team. We are happy to answer any questions you have & provide you with more information and honest advise.

Tissue culture, or micropropagation, involves taking a portion of a plant, surface sterilizing it, and growing it on a special medium under sterile conditions. For our Custom Propagation, we have divided this process into 1- Initiation, 2- Multiplication, and 3-Rooting. At all times, the plant under micropropagation is the property of the customer and can not be propagated and/or sold to anyone else.

Initiation

Initiation is the process of surface sterilizing the excised portion of the plant (explant), culturing the explant on initiation medium, and checking for any bacterial or fungal contamination. This is a critical step in the entire tissue culture process since the cultures will not grow well with any contamination and the explant will not survive too harsh a cleaning process. As with all stages of tissue culture, many aspects of the mother plant (its species, growing condition, portion excised, etc.) can influence the survival of the explant. Success rate for obtaining clean cultures can range from 0 to 90%.

In order to maximize our success we gather as much information as possible on your plants species (its culture needs, current propagation methods, previous tissue culture attempts, etc.) as well as the plant material you will send us (type of plant material and amount, growing conditions, etc.) before developing an initiation protocol.

Multiplication

Once the initiation protocol is established, the focus turns on to multiplication of initiated cultures. During the multiplication phase, we take the sterile initiated cultures, run a multiplication trial for optimum multiplication rate if necessary, then multiply the cultures by repeated transfers until the needed number of plants is obtained. At this point a portion of the plants (usually 500 to 1,000) will be removed from the culture for root initiation. The remainder will continued to be cultured with plants removed for rooting at 4 to 6 week intervals until the number ordered by the customer has been filled or the customer cancels the service.

As with Initiation, we use the information gathered about your plants and your needs (number and size of plants), to determine the proper multiplication protocol. In cases were there is little or no information on tissue culture of your plant, a trial of several multiplication media will be needed. The multiplication rate (how many new shoots have grown from a single shoot every 4 to 6 weeks) will determine the number of cultures that need to be maintained and so affect the final price per plant.

Rooting

Once the multiplication cultures are established, a portion of the shoots will be removed every 4 to 6 weeks and placed on a root promoting medium for 4 to 8 weeks. This begins the rooting and acclimation process which will need to be completed upon delivery. Though most do, the plants may not show roots and may need to be treated as tender cuttings.