Welcome to “Cloning for the Common Man”

Welcome to “Cloning for the Common Man”
By Joseph Parish

I have been involved with plants and “micropropagation” for many years now. To this day I am still awed at the prospect that I can take a single cell from a plant and create thousands of miniature duplicates, each and every one the exact image of the original.

No I am not a mad scientist nor am I some sort of crazed doctor. What I am is a botanist who enjoys the abilities that are bestowed upon us by the generosity of science.

In case you are not familiar with the term “micropropagation” then I will briefly explain it to you. The term refers to a method by which plants can economically be reproduced in large quantities. This system of plant reproduction permits a vast number of plants to be quickly propagated in a short period of time from a single high quality parent plant.

In theory, under laboratory conditions the growing portion of a plant or as we refer to it the meristem is sliced and artificially cultivated in a very sterile environment. With attention to detail this single sample can become hundred and thousands of similar plantlets. Naturally the amount of time that it takes depends upon the type of plant that the explants are taken from.

Although the actual techniques work best under laboratory conditions I intend to explain everything that you will need to know in this blog over a period of time. I will provide you with all the fine details on creating much of the required equipment that you will need as well as to provide you with formulas and other useful information.

No longer should mankind worry about a plant becoming extinct for we have at our disposal the means by which we can prevent this from happening. By following this blog you can successfully create clones of your favorite plants all in your kitchen if necessary. So I leave you with these thoughts in mind to consider until I place the next blog entry online. That entry will be a short how to on actually cloning the plants. I will not get into a lot of detail on it at his time but you will get the idea.

Copyright @ 2009 Joseph Parish