Skip to content
What’s the Key to Ensuring Quality Products?
Firstly, to ensure we have consistent quality products it starts with our ability to replicate season-to-season with the plants. Have you ever gone to a restaurant to have an amazing meal and then go back and the same meal was horrible??? The same principle applies the growing hemp plants. Consistency is key so let’s jump in on how we do just that at the Aloha Hemp Farm.
How Can Plant Propagation Play a Role on Quality Products?
At the Aloha Hemp farm, we have three ways of plant propagation, the first is by tissue culture. Tissue culture is growing plants in test tubes. You might be thinking, wait in test tubes… that must be GMO or bad. But luckily it is not bad, we use this method to clean up the plants genetics by removing viruses, molds and fungus from the plants. In essence, we are making the plants genetics strong once again.
Why is it important to clean up genetics?
Did you know how plants fight off viruses, mold, fungus, and bacteria? The plant encapsulates outbreak into the plant tissue. In other words, it is absorbed into the plants tissue to prevent further infection. The problem with that is the virus never really leaves the plant. In order to prevent or get rid of that infection or pathogen we need to clean the plants and replicate them so they are strong. That is exactly why we tissue culture plants, it enables us to make it “like new” once again.
How long does it take to tissue culture?
This is a loaded question as it depends on the goal. If there are no visible viruses on the plant, micro cloning can be completed to enable the plants to grow to the needed size just under 3 weeks. However, if the goal is to remove viruses from the plant it could take up to two to three months based on the explant that is used in the culture (i.e. leaf, stem, node, etc.)
What are other advantages of tissue culture?
Firstly, the plants are exact clones of the “Mother” plant. This means that we have near mirror images of all of the plants. The second benefit is the volume of plants that can be created. Unlike other propagation methods, tissue culture is only limited by the number media (i.e. solution) and the amount of glassware available. Our farm we can do over 20,000 plants per month!
What media can be used in the tissue culture propagation?
In conclusion, media is the solution that is put into the vials to grow out the plant. You could buy the solution; however, at our farm we created the solution from the resources on the land. It is another way we make a sustainable ecosystem and have less impact on the world (i.e. we don’t have to use a plane to obtain the product, we don’t have to use any packaging, etc.). In addition, the solution consists of a pure cytokinin with other minerals and sugar to ensure plant growth in a test tube is successful.
For the next method, find our blog next week on our other propagation methods.
Check out project CBD for more hemp related research and education.