In a joint effort to modernise tissue culture transplanting, Majestic Youngplants from Australia, BOCK Bio Science from Germany, and TTA from the Netherlands introduced a transplanting method that will shake the tissue culture market to its core. The outcome of a highly successful collaboration boosts average nursery capacities from 3,500 tissue cultures transplanted per day, to 15,000 per hour.
“Until now,” Nico van Rooijen, CEO at Majestic Youngplants, explained, “it has been assumed that agar transplanting cannot be done. With tissue culture randomly planted, no machine would know where each plant is, ruling out automation for a fact. Our system challenges this status quo: it gives each plant an exact position and transcribes that position to a transplanter. Adding the jewel to the crown, we developed a rectangular container – the NicIn tray® – that is 35% more efficient than conventional, round containers.”
The implications of a highly successful collaboration are endless. Nurseries will now be able to retain the transplantation process on site, boosting their environmental footprint and cutting back on delivery times. The method saves planting labour, laboratory space, transportation costs and damages, and growing time. Nico van Rooijen concludes: “I expect our work will impact at least 20% of the global market for tissue culture transplantation.”
For more information about this press release, please contact Bram Verschoor at bram@tta.eu.