How I Make Carnivorous Plant TC Media

[Pochi_plant]

There are tons of recipes for making tissue culture media for carnivorous plants and this is a generic one that works for most of the species but may not be optimized for all.

For 1 Liter of generic TC media that I use (no hormones):
1L distilled water
1/3 Murashige and Skoog (MS)
30g sugar
6-8g carageenan (gelling agent)
1-2ml ppm (optional but very helpful)
Activated charcoal (optional, depends on your need)

Murashige and Skoog medium is what gives the plants all the micro and macro nutrients they need. I like to get MS with vitamins included as an all in one. Due to the nature of carnivorous plants, the normal concentration used is too much for them hence only using 1/3 of the recommended dose as a baseline.

Sugar is another important component for TC as it serves as an energy source for the plants. 30g/L is a good starting point and you can modify as needed for other recipes.

Agar or Carrageenan is used as a gelling agent. I prefer carageenan due to its solubility in room temp water.

These three are really the basics of what you need but there are tons more stuff you can add to boost your success.

One of these is Plant Preservative Mixture made by @plantcelltech which is super helpful when starting out. It can make or break our first successfully explant initiation in vitro. This doesn’t mean you can slack on your aseptic techniques. Having a solid foundation of keeping your work area and tools clean is a must.

Activated Carbon is another ingredient you can add to your mix. This can do one of many things but it has drawbacks. At low concentrations it can be used to add color and higher concentrations (>1g) will help to absorb phenols secreted from the explants in your culture. The drawback is it makes the media so dark that you can’t stack culture vessels on top of each other as much as clear non AC media which will limit how many cultures you can have under 1 light.

Hormones are another aspect of plant tissue culture that come into play as you start culturing. They aren’t really needed for carnivorous plants as most species multiply/root readily.

Hopes this helps! Thanks for reading!