3 Feb 2022

PPM Case study—PPM Helps Eliminate Bacterial Contamination at FloraMaxx Labs!

Anjali Singh, MS

As a content and community manager, I leverage my expertise in plant biotechnology, passion for tissue culture, and writing skills to create compelling articles, simplifying intricate scientific concepts, and address your inquiries. As a dedicated science communicator, I strive to spark curiosity and foster a love for science in my audience.

Table of Contents

“ PPM was very effective in controlling bacterial contamination, without causing any phytotoxicity and growth aberrations.”Dr. Ashish Dave

About

Dr. Ashish Dave is the CEO and president at FloraMaxx Technologies Ltd. His company deals with the commercial-scale production of tissue culture plants for several purposes. He has been using Plant Cell Technology (PCT) product—plant preservative mixture (PPM)—for seven years. He still uses the product, in addition to PCT agar, for his tissue culture processes because of its unexpected results in the prevention of contamination and cloning of plants.

Challenges

Dr. Ashish’s labs were trying to grow healthy Prunus fruticosa x Prunus cerasus (Dwarf Sour cherry)—Variety-Valentine—but he was facing continuous occurrence of bacterial contamination in the elongation phase of micropropagation.

“ At the shoot multiplication stage, we were getting bacterial contamination at the shoot cluster bases. It was needed to be contamination-free as we were losing quite a few cultures, which was affecting our production logistics.”—says Dr. Ashish

He tried to use a broad-spectrum antibiotic by adding it into sterilized culture media, however, no significant results were obtained and the contamination was still an issue. It became challenging for him to maintain clean and healthy plant cultures at their shoot elongation stage.

“ I tried to use broad-spectrum antibiotics, but they were not helpful after adding them to the sterilized media. It was also a labor-intensive process.”— says Dr. Ashish

Solution

Dr. Ashish wanted to control the bacterial contamination and protect the cultures. After getting ineffective results from antibiotics, he did some literature search, where he came to know about PCT’s PPM.

PPM proved to be an effective and efficient solution for his bacterial contamination problems, which protected its cultures at their shoot elongation phase.

“ PPM certainly met our expectations. Our cultures were free from contamination.”—says Dr. Ashish

Procedure

The experiment performed by Dr. Ashish and implementation of PPM were followed as:

• The individual shoots of Dwarf Sour cherry was inoculated on to lower cytokinin concentrations, which after two weeks led to the formation of condensed shoots.
• The condensed shoot clusters were subdivided into smaller clusters (3-4 shoots in each cluster).
• Each such small cluster was transferred onto elongation media, containing 0.5 mg/l PPM, for another four weeks to obtain healthy shoots required for in vitro rooting.

“ We added PPM at four different concentrations (0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0 mg/L) in our elongation media. In our findings it was observed that PPM @ 0.5mgl-1 was best in overcoming bacterial contamination.”—says Dr. Ashish

Result

PPM was helpful to FloraMaxx in producing and marketing their cultures faster. It helped Dr. Ashish’s labs to successfully elongate smaller shoot clusters of the Dwarf Sour Cherry plant into healthy elongated shoots, which were highly desirable for in vitro rooting.

Figure: Image of healthy shoot clusters of Dwarf Sour Cherry plants after using PPM in the elongation media at Floramaxx.

“ What I like best about PPM is that:

• PPM is easy and safe to use.
• Effective at lower concentrations.
• Autoclavable, and did not change the pH of the media.
• And, did not cause any growth aberrations in elongating shoots.”—says Dr. Ashish

Ashish has also tried PPM on other Prunus varietals and observed similar results as the Valentine variety—though its effective concentration varied.

“ I would highly recommend PPM to all commercial TC companies in controlling bacterial contaminations especially at shoot multiplication and elongation phases of micropropagation. We have recently started using PCT Agar, it’s of good quality and affordable.”—Dr. Ashish Dave