How do you replace a seagrass meadowl 

 How can you rebuild a salt marsH 



It takes plants that you won't find at the local feed and-seed store. 



Photo courtesy of Michael Ka 



from the same 

 technology that puts 

 begonias in the 

 garden and peace 

 lilies on the patio. 

 It's the science of 

 tissue culture, also 

 known as micro- 

 propagation or in 

 vitro propagation. 

 Whatever the name, 

 it all starts with a 

 piece of a plant in a 

 test tube or other 

 culture vessel. In 

 contrast to the slow 

 propagation of 

 plants from seed or 

 division, 



micropropagation 

 can create hundreds, 

 sometimes thou- 

 sands, of healthy 

 new plants in a 

 matter of weeks. 



In his lab at the 

 Center for Marine 

 Science Research at 

 the University of 

 North Carolina at 

 Wilmington, Sea 

 Grant scientist 

 Kimon Bird takes 

 small pieces of 

 seagrasses and turns 

 them into bucketfuls of new plants 

 ready for the bottoms of shallow bays 

 and estuaries. 



Anyone who has ever thinned a 

 garden or produced a new houseplant 

 from a cutting knows that plants 

 continually renew themselves. They 

 sprout, they divide, they cast off seeds, 

 they send out runners. Micropropaga- 

 tion merely exploits basic principles of 

 plant growth by stepping up the pace. 



In the lab, scientists pamper the 



Individual microcuttings o/Pontederia cordata (pickerelweed) 

 are rooted in the laboratory. 



plants — clean them up, place them in 

 a sterile container in a liquid or gel 

 solution and put them on a special diet 

 of nutrients. Then they add growth 

 regulators to help nature take its course, 

 albeit considerably faster. 



"This nutrient solution provides all 

 the nutrients and vitamins the plants 

 need in order to grow," says Bird. "We 

 also supply these tissues with what are 

 called plant growth regulators that are 

 somewhat analogous to animal hor- 



mones. This causes 

 the tissues to grow 

 really fast and 

 changes the growth 

 patterns." 



Under natural 

 circumstances, 

 such as with a 

 houseplant, one 

 shoot tip would 

 produce one new 

 plant. 



"But by 

 changing these 

 different kinds of 

 plant growth 

 regulators, we can 

 get 15 small lateral 

 shoots coming out 

 of this one tip," says 

 Bird. In turn, each 

 of these new tips 

 can produce 1 5 

 more and so on. 

 "This is a way of 

 producing large 

 numbers of plants 

 from very small 

 amounts of tissues." 



Micropropaga- 

 tion became popular 

 in the commercial 

 arena during the 

 1960s, when 

 scientists cultured 

 orchids in the laboratory to rid them of 

 disease. In the bargain, they found that 

 these slow-growing species of plants 

 multiplied at breakneck speed in vitro. 

 One bud could produce as many as 4 

 million plants in the span of a year. 



Today, more than 40 percent of 

 housepiants we buy from garden 

 centers, florists and discount stores are 

 derived from tissue culture. In a 

 commercial nursery, growers can 



Continued 



COASTWATCH 19 



