Sunday, November 13, 2016

Usability tests of coconut's water in medium for in vitro propagation of orchids

As transplanting media, I often use Orchimax or P668, but I add some ingredients, as for example coconut water.
Coconut water is rich in potassium, various minerals and antioxidants, but what interest us is that it is rich in cytokinin, an hormone essential to the development of plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokinin

I have prepared three different media.
One with 3% coconut water, a second one with 7% and a third one with 11%.

In each medium I added NAA and IBA too, which are auxins, an other hormone "family"essential to the development of plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auxin

I decided to do my tests with some Angraecum magdalenae's seedlings.



I have transplanted some seedlings in two flasks of each media.
I'll give them the same conditions, light and temperatures, and I'll see in the next weeks, months, the differences.




I shall try, if it is significant, to post photos of  the flasks weeks after weeks

To know if the packaged coconut water is as effective as the water from fresh green coconut, I have prepared a 4th media, with fresh coconut water in the same % than the 3rd media, in which I have transplanted A.magdalenae's seedlings too.


I freeze the surplus in an ice-cube tray to be able to reuse them when I shall need it.
Each ice-cube is made with 15ml of coconut water.