BioMINT: A Temporary Immersion System for Agave Micropropagation.

Agaves are cultivated in Mexico as a source of industrial products such as fibers, nutritional supplements, and alcoholic beverages. Due to the demand for plant material, its long-life cycle, and the need to avoid predation on its natural populations, in vitro micropropagation represents a good option for agaves. Plant tissue culture has been successfully used to micropropagate selected elite individuals from plants of various Agave species of economic interest. However, it is necessary to implement systems that lower production costs without losing the quality of the plantlets obtained. This chapter describes the BioMINT™ bioreactor as an alternative for the micropropagation of agaves in the different stages of the micropropagation process.

Liquid in vitro culture for the propagation of Arundo donax.

We describe a simple and inexpensive plant micropropagation system for giant reed (Arundo donax L.) that uses axillary buds from the lateral stems of elite plants selected from field- or nursery-grown plants. The buds, attached to the stems are cultured in stationary liquid MS culture medium, supplemented with indole 3-acetic acid and kinetin. This formulation is the only one required for all the stages. Contrary to what happens in semisolid medium where roots are not formed, the plants cultured in liquid medium are whole plants with shoots and roots that develop at the same time. The survival rate of these plants when transferred to soil is close to 100% during acclimatization. A clonal line of 900 plants from a single mother plant can be produced in 4 months.

A new temporary immersion bioreactor system for micropropagation.

A new type of bioreactor system for plant micropropagation is described that incorporates a number of features specifically designed to simplify its operation and reduce production costs. The BioMINT unit is a mid-sized (1.2 L) reactor that operates on the principle of temporary immersion. It is built of polypropylene and is translucent, autoclavable, and reusable. It consists of two vessels, one for the plant tissues and the other one for the liquid culture media coupled together through a perforated adaptor piece that permits the flow of the liquid media from one vessel to the other. This flux is driven by gravity through a see-saw movement provided by equipment (SyB) consisting of electric motor powered platforms that change position. The structural simplicity and the modular and independent nature of the bioreactors simplify their operation and reduce the amount of hand labor required for transfers, thereby reducing the cost of the whole micropropagation process.

An efficient method for the micropropagation of Agave species.

Despite their economic importance, the Agave spp. have not been genetically improved. This is probably owing to the fact that they have very long life cycles and many of them have an inefficient sexual reproduction mechanism. Micropropagation offers an alternative to this problem through the efficient cloning of selected high-yielding "elite" plants. We report here an efficient method to micropropagate agaves and a strategy for the management of large scale production that has been successfully applied to several Agave spp.