This week has been full of lots of fun research and concluded in me finishing my first five jars. But I'll start at the beginning. I spent the week learning about these chemicals called Plant Growth Hormones, or PGRs. They're pretty self-explanatory, they are natural chemicals found in plants that make them grow. Certain combinations either make plants grow new shoots or roots. In real tissue culture, you can buy ones made in a lab. However, I'm doing cheap tissue culture! So what I found was that coconut water contains a number of these PGRs, but is extremely unreliable. Here's a
study I found explaining coconut water's various chemicals. Here's
one showing how it applies to tissue culture. It was some really interesting reading. If you want to learn about PGRs, I found
this,
this, and
this to be very helpful. In the end, I determined that
seaweed extract would actually be the most consistent supply of PGRs, but I ended up not finding any. Maybe I'll make a new media over spring break that contains some seaweed. It'll help if I transplant some of the samples and make stimulate some real growth.
So now onto the real news. I continued to play around with corn starch, and cooked three jars with different amounts of it in my pressure cooker for about 10 minutes. I determined that 6 teaspoons per 1/2 cup of water worked the best.
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| 4 teaspoons per 1/2 cup water. Notice the clear spot of liquid. |
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| 5 teaspoons per 1/2 cup water. Notice the small dots of liquid. |
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| 6 teaspoons per 1/2 cup water. Notice the white jelly goodness. |
A quick note about pressure cookers. They are very thick metal pots that have a very tight lock on the top. They have one valve to let just enough steam out to maintain 15psi. They are HORRIFYING. The steam screams out of the valve, and I refused to stay in the same room as it. Pressurized shrapnel from glass jars would not feel good ripping through my face if it blew up. I dropped a baby food jar this weekend, and when they shatter, they are sharp.
Pressure Cooker from
Drew E on
Vimeo.
After these tests, it was time for the real deal. I mixed my nutrient liquid with some corn starch (see video blog), and added it to the pressure cooker. I cooked it on high for about 2 minutes and then let is simmer to make a total of 30 minutes. I pulled the jars out, and the liquid had gelled perfectly! One jar opened as I pulled it out, which is a big no-no because any bacteria that entered the jar can quickly spoil it. But I closed it up again and am going to leave it, just so I know what contamination looks like. The other jars I covered with Saran-wrap to further seal them and keep out any nasties. I plan to sterilize the tissue samples and add them to the jars on Tuesday. I still have five more jars to prepare for Spring Break with the high-quality gel, agar.
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| WOOHOOOOO!!! |
So awesome!!!
ReplyDeleteThis sounds awesome and complicated and as this is my first time reading your blog I am kind of confused but I don't want to ask tons of questions so I'll just state a couple of things. Firstly I found it hilarious that you cant be in the same room as the pressure cooker as it is on, and I can just imagine you turning it on and getting away quickly. I also think its cool how you are doing many different Magiverish ways of doing it instead of legitimate plant growth hormone, and I applaud you for being able to find not one but a couple of things to do. I also want to see the comparison with the two or the end result because I currently can not decipher the pictures.
ReplyDeleteWow! To me this sounds pretty complicated and I am quite impressed. It's really cool that you are doing are doing this in your kitchen substituting what you have for all the fancy equipment that would be used in a lab. You may have addressed this earlier, but I was wondering why everything has to be sterilized. Is it to keep the plants from being affected/killed by any bacteria? That cornstarch is really gross, but I hope your plants like it. Good luck!
ReplyDelete