Glass Goods and Instruments Used for Plant Tissue Culture

In the below mentioned article, we will discuss about the types of glass goods and instruments used for plant tissue culture, their specific uses and how the glass goods and instruments are sterilized for culture.

Glass Goods and Instruments:

Glass Goods:

Different types of glass goods are used to culture plant tissues. The conventional and some specific glass goods are required for culture work.

Glass goods should be of Corning or Pyrex or similar boro-silicate glass. Measuring cylinder, conical flask, pipettes, beakers are required for preparation of media. Plant tissues are grown in wide-necked Erlenmeyer conical flask (100 ml, 150 ml, 250 ml etc.), culture tubes (25 mm in di­ameter and 150 mm in length), pretriplates (50, 90, 140 mm in diameter), screw-capped univer­sal bottles (20 cm³ capacity). Sometimes Jam bottle, milk bottle may also be used.

Particular care must be taken to ensure that glass goods are properly cleaned before use. The traditional method of cleaning new or dirty glass goods is to soak these in soap water followed by brushing and washing well with tap water and finally rins­ing with single distilled water. These are dried in the hot air oven and then the clean glass goods are stored in a dust-proof cupboard or drawer.

In order to autoclave the culture medium and to culture the plant material, culture vessels partic­ularly culture flasks and culture tubes must be fitted with cotton plugs which exclude microbial contaminants, yet allow free gas exchange.

For this, tightly rolled plugs of non-absorbent cotton wrapped in gauge cloth may be used. When in position the exposed part of each plug and the rim of the culture vessel should be covered by brown paper or a cap of aluminum foil. This will keep the plug and vessel rim free from dust and will protect the plug from wetting during autoclaving.

In some laboratories, pre-sterilized, dispos­able plastic wares are used in order to culture plant tissues. Some of these plastic wares are autoclavable. For the sterilization of medium containing thermo labile compounds or enzymes for proto­plast isolation a specially designed glass made bacterial filter (Fig 1.8) or an autoclavable plas­tic made bacterial filter is used.

A small spirit lamp made of glass will be required for the flame sterilization of instruments using methylated spirits.

Instruments:

Instruments routinely used for culture work include various sizes of scalpel and forceps, spat­ula, scissors, etc. (Fig 1.9). All instruments should be of stainless steel. A list of commonly used instruments, their measurement and uses are given above.