Tissue Culture Service Center

GOALS:

Offer plant tissue culture service for the scientific community in IFAS on a cost-recovery basis.

The Service Center will support research programs that are lacking tissue culture expertise or the necessary equipment. Alternatively, this service also allows other research programs to expand their plant biotech research beyond their own lab’s capacity.

Initially, we will focus on the following target crops: hemp, turf grasses, and sugarcane. The rational for these crops is that they are vegetatively propagated and therefore prone to viral and other diseases. With tissue culture, disease-free material can be maintained and rapidly propagated under aseptic conditions.

We also offer production of starting material for genome editing and genetic transformation.

VISION:

Improve the existing tissue culture protocols and expand the range of crops to best meet the needs of the IFAS plant research community.

PERSONNEL:

• Dr. Ali Babar, Associate Professor, Agronomy Department
• Angelika Altpeter, Lab Technician III
• Liping Wang, Biological Scientist III