Subject: Oak tissue-culture question

From: [email-masked] (Keith Lura)
Date: 4 Oct 1995 03:46:38 GMT

I would greatly appreciate learning about any information related
to the tissue-culturing of oaks.  I have learned that a growth medium
based upon cornstarch instead of expensive seaweed agar has had better
results with propogation of such plants as apple trees which are said
to be rather difficult;  perhaps this would hold true for members of
the genus Quercus as well.  Many, many thanks in advance for any
knowledge that can be passed on.

                            Stefan Lura

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From: [email-masked] (Bob Kirk)
Date: 7 Oct 1995 19:32:10 -0500

>knowledge that can be passed on.

   Sudeep Vyapari (working with H. Khatamian of the Dept. of Hort. here at
Kansas State) did his doctoral thesis on this a few years ago. As I recall,
he studied chinkapin & maybe red oak and managed to obtain somatic embryos,
etc. As usual the sticking point was regeneration of actual plants.
   Neither of them is currently working on this, but Sudeep is now with the
Dept. of Plant Science at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.
Can't get into their Gopher and the WWW site is useless as most, but if you
can get in touch with him (area code 409 if that helps), he might be able
to direct you further. He did mention other people were studying the problem
at that time, and perhaps more progress has been made.
   Be warned, though, this is not a trivial task, and in fact relatively
few hardwood trees have ever been successfully tissue cultured - let alone
had protocols determined for doing so.