# Nice aquatic plants to start my tissue culture business



## [email protected]

Dear Gurus,

I am new in this field and wanted to start a breeding farm for aquatic plants. Any suggestion on what are the popular species? We will be moving towards plant tissue culture and export market 

Please.. please.. share your knowledge here..

Thank you!


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## Michael

I have merged your identical threads, this request does not need to appear twice.

Could you tell us more about you and your project? It might make people more willing to give you advice.


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## Aquat

Though I don't know much about this topic, I would like to put in my thoughts. I think Petsmart's Topfin prepackaged plant in a bag is tissue cultured. That's what the guys over on Plantedtank.net said, and at around $6 per bag, and with that kind of quantity. It's a really great deal, plus the quality is good also. I've seen the package range from Eleocharis Parvula, Ludwigia or Rotala (not sure), Crypt. Green, Alternanthera Reineckii, and more. I always buy a bag of Parvula, great deal! $6 for about 2 - 3 pots worth.


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## Transposon

I would suggest to start with aquatic plants that either grow slowly and/or are hard to propagate. Stuff that multiply too easily are not worth the equipment, media, space, energy and labor. 
For instance, I wouldn't do stem plants unless it's super rare and you are stressed for time to create a new niche. Most aquatic stem plants root relatively easily. It's probably cheaper to do it the conventional way ie. by cutting. 
In contrast, if the plant is a medium to slow growing rosette plant, you might gain more advantage propagating it by tissue culture. Compare to stem plants which every node is capable of growing into a whole plant, a rosette plant usually only has one growth point (think a single Crypt plant). It takes longer for the rosette plant to develop side shoots than a stem plant to produce nodes. Tissue culture should shorten this waiting time by allowing you to produce whole plants from small leaf, leafstalk, or root pieces that do not normally develop into plantlets. 
The best scenario (IMHO) would be to use tissue culture to mass produce a plant that only you have (like a novel plant from nature or a new import). (And make sure only you have the right to propagate commercially). One of the advantages of tissue culture is that after you have established a working protocol for a particular plant, you will only need minimal plant material to obtain thousands to hundreds of thousand clones relatively fast. Both time and resource efficiency should help you beat the competition.


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## [email protected]

Hi guys, thank you for the comments. 
Michael, sorry for the double post :hail:

I am actually a biotechnologist working in a life science company, we have a plant tissue culture facility in my office (Malaysia) and my boss just happen to have interest in aquatic plants. So here I am, asking advices from you guys on what are the good plants to start with. We have obtained some lab protocols and _in vitro_ plant from the agriculture department but would not know what is the demand out there in the aquascaping world  The species that I have with me now: _Lilaeopsis sp., Glossostigma elatinoides, Hemianthus micranthemoides, Spathiphyllum wallisii and Cryptocoryne willisii_.

Aquat, thank you for the info and will check it out later. Transposon, great suggestion and comments. We will look for slow growing plants then, hope they will grow well in our culture medium.

Hope to hear more comments from the crowd !!


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## [email protected]

Hi guys, I have just started off with some common ones. Hope to get more species soon


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## Aquat

Great start!! Keep us updated! And what exactly are the plants placed in? Looks like agar jelly, haha.


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## Zapins

Any of the Bucephalandra species would be good to propagate. They are very slow growing, in high demand and extremely expensive at the moment.

Anubias species (anubias nana petite) is also another good one.

Are those plants all grown from cuttings or did you plant plugs of plants in the media?

I'd love to hear about your setup and protocol. I tried tissue culturing some plants a few years ago and they kept getting contaminated.


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## [email protected]

Another one! _Cryptocoryne willisii_


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## [email protected]

Thank you for the comment guys. Aquat, yeah !! they are some sort of agar haha; the medium for tissue culture. Hi Zapins, I have got it from cuttings and been growing it since few months ago. It is kinda long to reach this stage, since I am not familiar with aquatic plants, I wouldn't know how long more for the perfect harvest! The setup is pretty much a normal plant tissue culture lab. It is the medium that is tricky, well my team are still playing with the composition to get the best for each plant. I am currently eep: on Anubias...


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## totziens

I believe there's always a demand for carpet plants but I think you can forget about glosso & Elianthium tenellum. Marsilea was pretty common years ago in Malaysia but it has disappeared recently (my friend and I lost ours to suspected plants disease).


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## [email protected]

Hi Totziens, do you still have surviving sample? Maybe we can culture and bring it back to the market.


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## totziens

Unfortunately, no. My friend and I have been searching high and low for it for months. Maybe we don't have the right "network"


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## [email protected]

Hmmm.. too bad then.. we need to try harder to get.. maybe johor farm will be able to supply but not sure whether they will sell in small quantity or not lol. Thanks for sharing bro. We are looking for people that are interested to help us in trafing these plants since we can produce in large quantity if everything goes smooth


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## totziens

Maybe you can check with Kelvin whether he can source for Marsilea. I noticed that you have established contact with him in MAC forum.

Lilaeopsis brasiliensis is a good option too I believe. Unfortunately, the ones in my tank died and I only have a small cup of emersed ones. A friend running a LFS helped me to buy the emersed ones from another LFS in Puchong (I don't know exactly where) months ago.


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## [email protected]

Hi Totziens, ya I have contacted with Kelvin through e-mail. He is now in Qatar, cant do much to help me  What do you think about aquatic plants in Malaysia market? I have tried to reach out but the market is quite quiet


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## totziens

Frankly speaking, I think you cannot depend solely on Malaysian market. A lot of hobbies related business (not just in fish keeping) will die if they depend solely on Malaysian market. Since you're utilising tissue culture, I think you should consider exporting the plants. For non-tissue culture, it's difficult to export the plants due to rules and regulations imposed by various countries especially the U.S. and European market. What I am aware is fish export is a big business. I believe there is a great potential for plants as well but a lot of governments are worried about invasive plants these days.

Which part of Malaysia is your company located or which part of Kuala Lumpur?


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## [email protected]

Ya.. will die... our lab is in subang jaya, selangor. Can go KLIA fast


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## totziens

I think AI (Aquatic International) is using the old Subang Airport (I could be wrong). I think for cargo, you don't need to go to KLIA (you may need to survey to confirm)


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## [email protected]

I got no contact with AI.. newbie here lol.. I am thinking to do my culture like the 1-2 grow by tropica


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## totziens

I'm organising a barter trading for plants on the 14th Oct, 2012 at Tmn Bahagia. More info has been posted in MAC forum. Why don't you drop by? Maybe I can pass you some sample plants you can use (if they suit you)


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## [email protected]

I hope I can join I am involved in Halfest 2012.. Maybe we can catch up some other time?


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## [email protected]

Contaminated :mad2:


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## [email protected]

Contaminated :mad2:


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## [email protected]

Shifted Out :fear:


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## [email protected]

Now playing with this


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## Zapins

keith whats with the spam posts? When you attach files you should be able to attach more than 1-2 in a single post.


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## [email protected]

Hi, at first I was trying to load all in as jpeg/bmp format but it shows as "invalid file". Sorry for the "spam"


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## totziens

You mean your tissue culture failed? If that's the case, just grow them in the garden to get unlimited supply of the plants while you try to figure out what has gone wrong.

I have reported the image uploading issue in the following link but not sure whether any action has been taken:

http://www.aquaticplantcentral.com/forumapc/apc-forum-support/85712-how-add-pictures-postings.html


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## [email protected]

Thank you bro, :tea:.

Not fail lar, just a few of them contaminated. Ya, wanted to grow outside but dont have anything to start with for now. haha.

How was the barter trading?


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## totziens

Barter trading was good. All the plants were distributed. Nobody had to bring back the stuff he brought to the venue. Everyone had something to bring back except for one guy that did not even have a tank now.

Good to hear that only some are contaminated...not all. Have you tried any crypt?


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## [email protected]

That's good to hear. Hope that I have chance to participate the next. Yeah, have tried crypt. The picture is in this post (page 1). Any new demand coming in? We will get some new ones to try our.


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## totziens

I am not sure of the demand of plants in this industry. I cannot even see the trend. I doubt there is any trend at all. People just plant whatever that they can get hold of I believe (i.e. They will go for plant A if plant B is not available). I notice the following plants are almost always available over the years:

1. Java fern (especially the common large leaves ones. Not windelov, Philipines ferns, narrow leaf, etc).
2. Java moss
3. Glosso
4. Elodea (not Hornwort. It took me almost 5 years to find Hornwort from a hobbyist)
5. Common hairgrass
6. Riccia
7. Cabomba (the green one especially)
8. Unfortunately, some of the non-aquatic plants such as mondo grass, purple waffle, etc


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## [email protected]

Thank you totziens. Will check them out  I am now trying to grow them outside but failing coz dono what media to use..


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## jetajockey

[email protected] said:


> Thank you totziens. Will check them out  I am now trying to grow them outside but failing coz dono what media to use..


If they have rooted you can grow them in regular potting soil but they need to be in a sealed environment to keep moisture in. The idea is to have enough water in the tank/tub to keep the soil moist but not dripping wet. Remember that most of these plants come from a fully aquatic or bog environment so humidity is high. You could also attempt to plant them in an aquarium setting.

Do you mind sharing your media formulas for different species in tissue culture? Like which hormones and media, murashige and skoog (MS) seems to be the common thing here, not sure about there.


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## totziens

Keith, jetajockey has a point. You need to make sure the plants are moist especially when you are still converting the plant from submerged to emersed. I suggest you to cover it with plastic wrapper but you can poke some tiny holes. Based on my own experience, you can remove the plastic completely when the leaves have converted to emersed form. In a country with lower humidity, they may need to be covered all the time. In Malaysia, you can uncover it eventually. Just avoid direct sunlight for long duration. Otherwise everything will dry up


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