From tissue culture to genetic engineering

[mensplace]

After the successfully completion of moving desired sweet potato varieties from test tubes to soil to preserve exactly the same variety traits and simply prepare slips for the coming years tests with my soil, I thought of the many ways that I might employ tissue culture in the futre to save time and provide exact copies of plants. Then, I ran across this, in which they carry such pursuits to the level of genetic engineering...
http://www.faqs.org/patents/app/20090313716

[DuckCreekFarms]

mensplace.

What sweet potato varieties do you have. I have over 100 varieties and looking for others to include in my collection.

I have been wanting some of the varieties supplied by this tissue culture operation (link below), but they have such high minimums>>>

Phytocultures Canada - Sweet Potato - Ipomoea batatas

thanks
Gary VS

[carolyn137]

Have either of you looked at the huge number of Sweet Potato varieties that Glenn at Sandhill Preservation offers as slips?

Sweet potatoes, not tomatoes, are his favorite crop and I know many folks who always get their slips sent from him.

http://www.sandhillpreservation.com/

[DuckCreekFarms]

Carolyn

thanks for the reference. I have over 100 varieties of sweet potatoes. Glen and I discussed trading earlier in the Fall. I sent him my list, but did not hear back. I have around 40 varieties that he doesn't have and vise versa.

I was planing to list around 10 or 12 varieties in the SSE yearbook, but when I saw what he said on his website about having crop failure and wasn't going to sell by variety this year, I jumped my listing to around 34 varieties. I do see now that he is listing individual Sweet Potato varieties in the 2010 SSE yearbook, but not through his regular sales this year.

Gary VS (OK SC G)

[mensplace]

I did check the site and it was beautiful. Thing is, with my spinal and hip fusion I can't really see myself digging up sweet potatoes. After a few hours of turning compost the other day and two morphines in the evening, that too will have to soon give way to seriously raised beds with lots of compost and additives. Maybe I can find someone younger to till some in. I ordered four testube clones (one of each variety) simply to see how they would do in this Georgia clay soil. Just having come out of the test tubes a week ago, each is now a few inches tall, but doing well. If available this spring, I will gladly propagate them and contribute some to the cause for general distribution. However, per LSU, this spring a newly released "Evangeline" with much more sweetness than Beauregard will be released and available. For myself, it has been fascinating experimenting for the first time with tissue culture. Wish I had pursued this as a career forty years ago!

[carolyn137]

mp, whether you get your plants via tissue culture grown ones or as slips you still have to plant them and then dig up the tubers when mature, right?

I ask b'c you said in your post above:

(Thing is, with my spinal and hip fusion I can't really see myself digging up sweet potatoes. )

What am I missing here?

And yes, I understand tissue culture propagation; I'm a retired Microbiologist as I mentioned in one of your earliest threads here about soil amendments.

[mensplace]

Originally Posted by carolyn137

mp, whether you get your plants via tissue culture grown ones or as slips you still have to plant them and then dig up the tubers when mature, right? I ask b'c you said in your post above:
(Thing is, with my spinal and hip fusion I can't really see myself digging up sweet potatoes. ) What am I missing here? And yes, I understand tissue culture propagation; I'm a retired Microbiologist as I mentioned in one of your earliest threads here about soil amendments.

Not really all that complex. I can last (for now) in short spurts until the pain kicks in. I LOVE working in the garden. A few months ago, before the strokes, and the onset of this I could walk fine. Maybe I refuse to give up easily and NEED to get outside and do SOMETHING as a partial reason for being....being ME. The wife loves sweet potatoes. I wanted to learn something new. Too, I wanted to test a few varieties in our environment and soil. I'm told that with the aggressiveness of this disease I won't able to do much in the way of movement for long, but for now I refuse to just stop. So, yes, I may have to get down on the ground for these four slips and do some work with a hand tool, but that beats staying inside and vegetating. Even an author has to get out sometimes. You ought to see me sitting on the tailgate of my truck using a four pronged fork to pull the manure off! Enough? Point being simply that I surely didn't need a lot more sweet potatoes when four would address the needs for the two of us and my own curiousity.