Dr. Toby's Plant Tissue Culture Manual
Plant Tissue Culture Kit Toby M Horn, Ph.D.
This process was developed for the Grade 9 Introduction to Biotechnology
Program at Thomas Jefferson High School for
Science and Technology, Alexandria, Virginia, in 1985.
The instructions for building a simple tissue culture hood were
developed soon after so that classes at other school could also perform plant
tissue culture without having an expensive, large and noisy machine in the classroom.
Directions for making the hood were published in the Journal
of the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology in January, 1989.
Get the instructions with pictures
here (Acrobat PDF File)
This kit was distributed to Virginia teachers for 2 years through
the Biotech-in-a-Box program of the Fralin
Biotechnology Center, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
The study organism is African violet because:
- Dr. Toby likes to grow them
- African violets really are propagated using tissue culture
- Students can make nice gifts for loved ones
- The leaves are good to study, draw and have an soft texture
The following components are required and can be obtained from your local
market:
| Bleach (1 pint or quart) |
Rubbing alcohol |
| African violet plants |
Distilled water (gallon container) |
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Manual (Acrobat .pdf file, 25 pages, 808K)
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Materials
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Teacher Notes
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Preparing Tissue Culture Medium
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Assembling the tissue culture hood
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Setting up the workspace
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Aseptic handling
(make this an overhead)
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Setting up the workspace Part 2
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What the tissue culture process parts look like
(make this an overhead)
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What African violet leaves and developing cultures look
like through a high quality dissecting microscope (10X-30X magnification).
Thanks to Dr. John McDowell. (Not active at the present time!)
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Web LINKS
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Print Resources
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