Table of contents:

Meristem - An Unconventional Way Of Plant Propagation And Firm
Meristem - An Unconventional Way Of Plant Propagation And Firm

Video: Meristem - An Unconventional Way Of Plant Propagation And Firm

Video: Meristem - An Unconventional Way Of Plant Propagation And Firm
Video: Production of healthy plant materials by shoot tip meristem culture 2024, March
Anonim
Biotechnological laboratory of Meristem nursery
Biotechnological laboratory of Meristem nursery

On the 74th kilometer of Tallinn highway, on the site of the former manor house, gentians grow in huge numbers, magnolias that have overwintered in the open field are blooming.

There they clone plants and breed a Russianized miracle fish - a beautiful koi carp. Fabulous place! Probably, the British say about such a garden: this is the closest place to paradise on Earth.

We learned about the existence of the cattery "Meristem" by its advertisement, which first appeared in our magazine. Intrigued by the words "biotechnological laboratory", "meristem", "pond ornamental fish". We haven't had anything like this before. Asked for a visit.

Gardener's guide

Plant nurseries Stores of goods for summer cottages Landscape design studios

The owner of the nursery, Inna Aleksandrovna Nemtsina, meets at the entrance to the estate, leads through a picturesque courtyard with flower beds, slides, ponds, through greenhouses with exciting smells of damp earth and primroses in pots.

- Oh, what unusual primroses, and this is a lumbago …

Inna Aleksandrovna does not allow us to stop - we have a big program ahead of us: tasting homemade liqueur from the master's cellar, visiting the laboratory, getting to know the fish, walking into the fields. In the living room of an old house, at a massive table, we drink a sweet-tart wine made from local berries. The friendly hostess answers questions.

Nursery "Meristema" is an individual farm with a huge plot of land. Inna Alexandrovna had a dacha at this place. Gradually, the "estate" grew to several hectares, which it acquired from a former state farm. She sold her successful long-term business in the city, and invested the proceeds in the business that her soul was striving for - she seriously and for a long time began to create a beautiful garden. At present, the collection, primarily of ornamental plants of the nursery, numbers thousands of items, and it is continuously replenished with new products from European flower trendsetters.

Why do we need to rediscover America?

Many of us hobby gardeners go through trial and error to grow new plants in our fields. We often fail, lose time, energy, money. We are terribly disappointed to find a valuable bush killed by the frost. We are perplexed why the overwintered plant does not bloom, and, blaming ourselves, we continue to groom and cherish it in the hope that it will reward us with its lush flowering, and again we are deceived.

Inna Aleksandrovna follows the same path, but consciously. She solves her problem, as a result of which we get the desired plants that are guaranteed to delight in a harsh land without problems and additional efforts of the gardener. She imported thousands of plant names from Europe and tested them on her plantations, selecting guaranteed flowering and frost-resistant species and varieties, in order to then start them up for propagation.

The selection is carried out in the most thorough and exacting manner. Imagine, from a complete collection of irises ordered in the USA, and these are 700 varieties, after seven years of testing in the nursery, less than a third were left - only those that endure our harsh winter. A select bouquet of 200 varieties is amazing. It contains the entire color gamut, and the size of individual specimens is comparable to the size of a human head.

Notice board

Kittens for sale Puppies for sale Horses for sale

At one time, Inna Aleksandrovna imported Dutch rhododendrons and built winter "houses" over them. As a result, stopped at wintering without shelter. Many today seek to acquire forsythia. The shrub that has become fashionable attracts with abundant flowering in early spring. However, only ovoid forsythia winters well and blooms in our climate. The rest of the varieties, no matter how coddled with them, will at best respond to care with three to five flowers.

- Vain labor, - Inna Aleksandrovna notes, - to grow magnolias in the open field. The exception is Siebold's magnolia - only this variety overwinters and blooms with us. Experiments with hydrangeas allow us to conclude that excellent garden varieties, although they winter, do not have time to bloom, because the growing season and the number of positive temperatures do not allow them to lay flower buds.

You can, of course, dig it up in the fall and transfer it home for the winter, and return it to the flowerbed in the spring, but is it worth messing around when there are magnificent paniculate and tree-like hydrangeas that winter and bloom without problems in the open field. The most winter-hardy of them - the chic Bretschneider hydrangea - blooms until frost, reaches three meters in height, and its flower baskets are 20 cm in diameter. Mahonia holly has its own oddities: it winters better if it grows in the shade, and blooms in a sunny place. Therefore, - advises Inna Aleksandrovna, - it is better to choose a place where the soft morning or evening sun will shine on her.

For a decade and a half, thousands of plants have been selected and introduced through the "Meristem" nursery.

How to find an approach to gentian?

I was especially interested in flowers, which I cannot grow by myself. These include fragrant violet, dream-herb, gentian and similar exquisite little things. Many times I tried unsuccessfully to achieve the shoots of these lovely flowers, sometimes I succeeded, but the success was not fixed: the shoots died in childhood. The gentian bought on the market, the size of a thimble, did not survive, and it was not the first freshness. A sad fate befell the lumbago, but I could not find a ready-made royal violet. And, imagine, in response to a question about the cherished, I was shown a sea of spring gentians: of different ages - from tiny little ones to three-year-olds covered with the first buds. It turned out that the gentian is a favorite flower of the owner of the nursery herself, to overcome the difficulties of reproduction of which she set herself the goal.

- I like to overcome difficulties, - says Inna Aleksandrovna, - and it is incredibly difficult to grow a gentian. Especially spring stemless. Three years pass before the first flowering. It is also difficult to reproduce lumbago. These flowers are not even cloned. And it was possible to grow stemless thistle only in a laboratory way.

-What a handsome freak, how unusual! - Inna Alexandrovna admires, bending over a plant unfamiliar to me. - He does not share, does not tolerate transplants.

And violets grow here in abundance - there is a white one, and a freckle, and that one - a royal fragrant one. The variegated hellebore blooms in full force. I don't even know what to ask about. In "Meristem" there is everything and more than what I have heard and dreamed of. Incredible.

An unconventional breeding method

The botanical term "meristem" refers to the point of growth of a plant - a group of cells found in the axillary buds, in the apical bud, at the end of the root, under the bark. They are 90% free from all kinds of viruses and bacteria. The meristem size is only 0.001 - 0.005 mm. These cells are isolated under a microscope, placed in a nutrient medium, and microplants begin to develop from them. When they develop, they are checked again for infection with viruses and bacteria, they are given chemotherapy, thermotherapy, and then propagated by microclonal cuttings in nutrient media.

In France, up to 95% of plants are now propagated in this way. This is an expensive technology that requires equipment, specialists, and a large amount of initial, already tested material. The plant of each variety is specific and requires a corresponding microenvironment. It takes a lot of time to introduce culture into production. In Russia, this method was applied only to cereals and potatoes.

The biotechnological laboratory is headed by Natalya Mikhailova (pictured). A physician with experience in the laboratory, she is currently studying at the biological faculty of the university. She introduced me to the laboratory.

Well what can I say? Science fiction, and nothing more. In sterile clean rooms, lab technicians with gloves sit at tables. Using tweezers, they scrupulously separate the plants from each other - cuttings. Every now and then the tool is fired on burners. There are autoclaves, distillers, microscopes, laboratory scales … In another room, plants with translucent roots turn green on shelves in hundreds of jars on transparent, jelly-like media.

- This is surfiniya, - Natalya shows. - She is already ready for transplanting into soil. But this is an indicator of a violation of sterility - you see: mold.

Decorative, fruit and berry crops multiply in jars. For pink terry gypsophila, reproduction through a test tube is almost the only way to get offspring. They say that cloned raspberries give a 30-40% increase in yield, and strawberries (there are 26 varieties in the nursery) bear fruit in the year of planting.

Plants that have reached the required development are transferred from the jars to a sterile soil, where they adapt to normal conditions, grow, overwinter and are offered to customers.

My kingdom for koi carp

Colored carp, popular in many countries of the world, is bred only by "Meristem" in the North-West. Several years ago, when Inna Aleksandrovna first saw koi carps in a foreign garden center, she was carried away by them and, by all means, decided to get her. Years have passed since then, during which foreign fry grew and spawned, and their children gave the offspring of koi carp of Russian selection. Koyushki, as the hostess affectionately calls them, are adapted to local conditions, hibernate in open reservoirs.

In the nursery, some carps live in ponds. Individuals of interest for breeding are kept at the fish farm. I caught the moment of their spawning. The main fish breeder Nikolai Vladimirovich Kochegura asks me not to make noise, brings me to huge vats with clear water, and I become a witness of the great mystery of the birth of life. It is incomprehensible: from the tiny eggs that appear before my eyes, beautiful fish, like the Firebird, will grow. It looks like a flower grows from a tiny seed. And these creatures of God, who were born with the help of man, will live on Earth! Thanks to "Meristem".

In the adjacent room, in huge aquariums, there are buffalo, oranda, a goldfish - a comet, black-backed and chintz shubunkins, a telescope fish is a rarity. Sterlet and sturgeon swim in the pools. This is too strong an experience for one day. And still ahead of us are nymphs - a separate song of the owner of the nursery. The collection of these plants, like everything else here, is exhaustively diverse. Showing ponds with nymphs, Inna Aleksandrovna connects to the ongoing excavation of rhizomes. There are things that require her personal inspection and participation. She breaks off pieces from the roots - this is for laboratory reproduction.

But soon the tale tells itself, but it takes a long time before the work is done. Many years passed before "Meristem" presented to the society the fruits of its labor, which we are not yet able to appreciate. For me personally, the day spent in the place closest to paradise near St. Petersburg was a happy revelation.

Recommended: