The ASRBC Lab of ACI Ltd. is one of the ISTA member laboratories of the country. It has been working for the commercial production of high-quality potato plantlets for the last couple of years through its Tissue culture lab. The lab is equipped with all the necessary instruments and maintains an international standard.
The tissue culture lab has various sections where the works are divided to maintain the quality of the products. The cleaning room is totally separated from the production and multiplication area. There are a washing zone and a big autoclave which sterilizes the washed bottles twice to kill all the infectants. A third autoclave is used only to sterilize the media. The other room is the media preparation room. These are separated from the main working zone. Apart from these, there are two other rooms where only scientific staff can enter. This consists of the working room and the growth room. There are three laminar hoods where continuous sub-culture is being done. With three people working on an average 2300 plantlets are being produced per day. Then lastly there is the growth room. It is capable of holding 1 lac plantlets at a time. The temperature and light are always being maintained as required. All these are backed up by generator for sustained supply of electricity. Fumigation is done every other month. But during huge amount of work fumigation is done every month.
The tissue culture has been growing very well. Various milestones have been achieved. At present research is being done to produce banana plantlets using tissue culture techniques. For commercial purpose, last year successfully 10,000 potato plantlets has been delivered. This year or target has been set to 36,000 plantlets. But we have made 46,000 plantlets for this season. Basically, four varieties are preferred namely, Lal Pakri-1, Lal Pari-2, Daimant & Asterix. We hope to produce 1 lac potato plantlets the following year and also hope to achieve success with the banana tissue cultured product.
SL. VARIETY TARGET ACHIEVED
1. Lal Pakri-1 1,000 Plantlets 1,800 Plantlets
2. Lal Pakri-2 1,000 Plantlets 1,800 Plantlets
3. Asterix 6,000 Plantlets 10,000 Plantlets
4. Daimant 26,000 Plantlets 33,000 Plantlets
Total 34,000 Plantlets 46,600 Plantlets
Apart from the above information, the somaclonal variations for selection of the desired type of plants are being in the process. Using the lab facilities there has been a number of varieties developed and registered through TILLING on potato and Brinjal. The products of Trichoderma have been given to ACI formulation for production. The assistance of Aqief Afzal, Research assistant of ASRBC is highly appreciated in preparing this article.
