General Information About Synthetic Seeds and My Experience So Far

The following information is based on the web article: “Artificial Seeds and Their Applications”. Plant propagation using artificial or synthetic seeds opens up new vistas in the fields of agriculture and plant biotechnology. This technology provides a promising system for the propagation of non-seeds producing plants, polyploids with elite traits, plant lines with problems in seed propagation, and transgenic plants. The micropropagation techniques ensure abundant supply of the desired plant species. However seed propagation has not been successful in some species. Possible reasons for this may be the seed’s heterozygosity, size of the seed, insufficient endosperm and the necessity of an association with mycorrhizal fungi for the seed to germinate (which is our case with orchids). Synthetic seed production technology is currently considered as an effective alternate process for seed propagation and it has been recommended as a very powerful device for mass propagation of plant species that are commercially valuable, such as the orchids.                  

Personally, I am very satisfied with the all work my partner and I have done so far. We have already decided which are going to be the main components of the encapsulating matrix (which of course I can not tell you) and we have done several tests varying their concentrations. After this we selected by our judgment, which were the best concentrations. Using the proper techniques we manage to encapsulate some orchid’s embryos with our created matrix. Then the seeds were submerged into the nutrient medium and were stored. We did this on a Friday. Sadly our seeds did not survive the weekend given that when we came on the next Monday we observed that they all got severely contaminated. This was of course very frustrating, but one can not expect to have excellent results all the time. After all that is what research is all about, learning from the mistakes, determining the possible sources of error and making the proper adjustments in order to not repeat those mistakes again. We believe that out failure had to do with aseptic manners and so we decided to give it a second try but this time doing the process in a more aseptic condition. Let’s hope that this time works. I really can not say that my experience on this research was always this wonderful. I must admit that it took me some time on getting used my research, but thank God I was able to overcome that. Concerning my lab partner, I love working with her. We definitely make the perfect team and the mentor is very pleased with our work. I believe that our success as a team has a lot to do with our commitment with the investigation. Another fact that is needed to be considered is that when we used to be lab partners in back in first year when we studied General Chemistry. One of the reasons why I like working with her is that we have somehow managed to make the perfect balance of having fun while working responsibly. I consider that I have learned a lot during this first month, and not only in the academic, but in how to be tolerating towards others opinion that differs from mine. I really can not complain on anything.    

~ by jctec on February 24, 2008.