28 Aug 2020

Case Study: How PPM™ Shielded Cultures from Endophytic Bacteria!

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

“Having PPM in your sterility protocol and your media gives your otherwise seemingly impossible cultures a chance to survive while maintaining the genetic integrity and health of the plant.” – Colette

About

Colette Peck works for an agricultural-based startup company. The company is focused on the micropropagation of Cannabis strains to reduce genetic variation in crops. They grow plants of specific varieties, collect their seeds, and hand them over to farmers to grow in fields.

Challenge

Colette chose the fresh shoot/apical stem segments from the specific plant varieties for the cloning. However, she was sick of bacteria that were continuously invading and contaminating her cultures, despite using almost every type of pre-emptive wash like NaOCl, HgCl2, Tween20, etc.

She tried all the possible chemicals and components that promised to protect the cultures. However, none of them worked!

“If we found a strength that stopped the contamination - it also killed the plants.” –says Colette

She could not use antibiotics because of its several negative consequences observed in the cultures, and maintaining the genetic stability of the culture was her utmost priority.

“Since genetic stability is extremely important in these cases - antibiotics are avoided at all costs.” –says Colette

Then, she discovered the bacterial contamination was leaching from the plant itself, in all her cultured strains (5 or 6 indica and sativa strains).

Solution

Colette wanted to use some products which could minimize the damage to cultures and reduce the contamination to make the process operational and effective.

Then, she heard about PPM™ (Plant Preservative Mixture) from a few other plant culture scientists. She decided to give it a try with her cultures.

“I discovered discussion boards from other plant culture scientists that recommended PPM for home culture use and I decided to try it in our media.” –says Colette

Result

The PPM™ helped Colette protect her cultures from the endophytic bacteria by keeping it from spreading through the media and hijacking her cultures.

“PPM absolutely kept bacteria from spreading in the media and overtaking the plants, allowing them to grow.” –says Colette

PPM™ helped the cultures to grow and survive. By using the product, she was able to rest without stressing over the contamination of the cultures. It also led her to save a lot of effort and money, which she could now put into her other favorite activities!

“We have now also discovered that while it uses a large volume of PPM, sterilizing alone with PPM can reduce the time and complication needed from other sterilization processes.We are very grateful to have found PCT’s product PPM, and it is now a staple in the lab!” –says Colette