Press Releases
Plants frozen in time win gold at Chelsea
Release Date : 24 May 2007
Scientists from the University of Reading have won gold at the Chelsea Flower Show – by showing how plants can be "frozen" in time.
The team, from the School of Biological Sciences, have been working on how cryopreservation - the secure storage of germplasm at ultra low temperatures - can be used to help to conserve disappearing varieties of ornamental plants.
The University of Reading team is now working with the National Chrysanthemum Society to develop affordable cryopreservation procedures which can be used to halt the rapid loss of old chrysanthemum varieties.
Dr Andy Wetten said: "We recently succeeded in securing funding from the DTI and BBSRC for the expansion of this research, and for an exhibit about the work to then receive gold at Chelsea really is the icing on the cake. The Chelsea Flower Show continues to be the highlight of the horticultural calendar and this first gold for the School has really brought our plant conservation work into the spotlight.
"Over time, pests, diseases, climatic catastrophes and lack of maintenance have brought about the loss of many old varieties of garden plants, and many are now gone forever. But the availability of older genotypes can allow plant breeders to recover attributes of colour, scent and disease resistance. In a period of climate change, there is real value in maintaining a diversity of plants adapted to our environment in the face of increasing uniformity found in garden centres.
"The exhibit at Chelsea shows the process of shoot tip conservation at ultra-low temperatures from the selection of archetypal plants, through shoot tip dissection and cooling, to rapid multiplication after long-term storage."
Plant cryopreservation has been successfully applied to a range of major food crops, such as potato, banana and cocoa. Some of these systems were dependent on elaborate, controlled rate freezing equipment but vitrification - the transformation of a liquid to a glass-like state - can now be achieved in shoot tips relatively easily and cheaply by incubating them in optimised mixtures of permeating cryoprotectants and then rapidly cooling them. The Reading group are putting experience gained in cryopreserving even more challenging tropical species like cocoa to good use in developing cost effective systems for conservation of temperate ornamental plants.
When tissues are cooled to -196ºC (the temperature of liquid nitrogen – a relatively cheap and widely available cryogen) metabolic processes are effectively suspended. Because the tissues that cryopreserve most effectively are only a few millimetres in size, hundreds of varieties can be safely stored in small liquid nitrogen-filled vessels. The longest-established cryopreserved plant collections are only a few years old but it appears that, so long as the cooling and re-warming steps can be achieved without excessive damage through ice crystal formation and extreme dehydration, the viability of shoot tips can be maintained indefinitely.
The techniques now being pioneered by Reading will be further developed as part of a DTI/BBSRC funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Walberton Nursery in West Sussex. A major aim of the project is to establish the first cryopreserved collection of chrysanthemum germplasm which can then be made available to growers and breeders.
Using these techniques in situ collections of ornamental plants can be supported and our cultivated plant heritage may be secured for accurate replanting of old gardens, changes in plant fashion and in preparation for even less predictable changes in our environment.
Ends
For more information, contact Dr Wetten via email. He is at Chelsea on Thursday May 24 but can be contacted for interviews via the University press office – 0118 378 7388.