Transcript

Polyploidy · Hydroponics Daily

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Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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I've got a bit of a spring in my step today because my colleague Matthew has
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been to see a group of growers down in Milton Keens and they all said that they
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listened to this podcast religiously and found it very informative and trustworthy.
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So that's been really encouraging to hear because as a podcaster you're often flying blind.
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The statistics, as I've talked about in the past, that you get back from the
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podcast providers are terrible.
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The charts don't mean anything so it's really good to hear back from growers.
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Today's subject I thought I'd talk about polyploidy which I know I mentioned
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yesterday when I was talking about sound on plants and I said that if you give
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an ultrasonic jolt to a plant give a bit of a zzzz it could induce polyploidy.
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Didn't explain what that was and so I thought I'd do a podcast on
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this today in case anyone was unaware so in
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most animals and you have a
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set of chromosomes you have a matching pair
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of every chromosome the only exception to that is male bees that are have a
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single set they're what we call haploid everyone else all the other animals
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are diploid and you're only polyploid you have multiple sets if something's
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gone wrong so tetraploids, quadruploids.
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Hexploids, all very rare in the animal kingdom, but not in the plant kingdom.
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So plants are normally diploid, and then the pollens are haploid.
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So diploid, one pair of chromosomes of every set of chromosomes.
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But many, many plants are polyploids naturally
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so cotton i think has is a
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quadruploid wheat is a hexaploid so
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that's got six sets of chroma six
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matching of every chromosome i'm struggling
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with this chromosome and so that's what's
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naturally occurs in wheat and so if you want to breed it with
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another grass you have to match up the chromosomes and we'll talk about
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that bit later and but you
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can artificially change the number of
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chromosomes and you do this as i said in previously ultrasound was one new way
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they found of doing this but the standard traditional way is to get a chemical
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called colchicine and apply it to seedlings or cuttings or micro-propagated
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calluses anything like that and you will induce,
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polyploidy by interrupting mitosis and mitosis
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is the natural cell division and rather than it the cremasome is doubling and
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then splitting into each individual cell they double then they double again
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by mistake and then split it's a bit like your washing machine normally it goes
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around on a cycle and one step has to follow the next.
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This one is a broke, you put the colchicine in, it breaks the washing machine
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and it does one of the steps twice.
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So it might add the washing powder. Anyway, that analogy has gone way too far off kilter.
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So you add this chemical colchicine. It's a natural mutagen is what it would
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be described as, so fairly dangerous. It actually comes from a natural plant though.
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It's an extract of autumn crocus and it's been used in horticulture to breed
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polyploidy for a number of, for decades.
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And i'll talk about the reasons why you would
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do that later you can now normally
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it's professional growers that can do this but you you can
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do this if you're an amateur and you want to induce
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polyploidy you might have read some reports about it and to
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do it you get some autumn crocus bulbs very
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important you get autumn crocus because they're not related closely to
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the normal crocus only the autumn crocus contains this chemical
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colchicine and you grind them up in a fruit processor get
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that paste and then the extract and then apply that extract
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to your seedlings that you want to enjoy polyploidium
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however do not use the food processor that
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is in your kitchen and do not
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use this food process for food ever again because
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that would be one very very quick way
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to get yourself either dead very
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ill or get cancer because these are
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mutinogenic chemicals you better to make sure
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you wear gloves and dispose of all the ingredients carefully
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and don't do it when there's kids and animals around and things like that so.
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It's something you can do as an amateur it's not something i would recommend if
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you're a bit of an idiot and but you can if
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you want to mess around with it's a quick way of an easy way
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of mutating plants producing new varieties new strains
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and messing around with polyploidy if you've seen polyploidy
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plants in your crop and you think yeah i could look at that if you're
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researching polyploidy be careful you can waste a lot of time
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as i have done this afternoon because there's a lot of ai dross
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out there now you know a lot of people are writing these blog posts and to
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get content for their websites and they're just saying hey chat
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gbt write me a blog post about using polyploidy
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in crop x and then they just vomit out generic absolute nonsense and the subtitles
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don't match the actual content and things like that so be careful i mean i've
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went on the dutch passion website today and they had an AI Dross page, so be careful of that.
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So, yeah, back to polyploidy.
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Apples so some of the things you can some of the reasons you might
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want to induce polyploidy apples if you turn
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them into a tetraploid they see double the amount of chromosomes you
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get apples that are twice as big sounds amazing doesn't
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it you also get watery apples that are misshapen so
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you couldn't sell them and also do
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you want an apple that is twice as big than a normal
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size apple you could get mutations that
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increase the amount of resin increase the amount of active
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ingredients in there however just putting your
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plants into polyploid it doesn't mean guarantee that they
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are going to have increased levels of resin active
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ingredients bigger flowers it's very very
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unreliable so you get a.
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Lot a lot of the the absolute opposite can happen
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and you can get less resin and less active ingredients
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and smaller of flowers and things like this so it's that's
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one of the reasons it's not used routinely and and we don't
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talk about polyploidy as much as we do other techniques because it's so
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unpredictable unpredictable that's the word i was looking for you can
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produce denser flower buds you can produce
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more vigorous plants occasionally you can produce
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plants with different growth profiles if you've ever seen plants
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with different leaf shapes this could be one of the reasons why polyploidy you
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can produce and this is a really good one sterile plants
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so the sterile against pollination so they don't produce seeds this
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is important if you have a dioecious plants that
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you do not want to produce seeds so it's like
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hops and other plants in that family and also hyacinths where when the plants
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are seeded they the flowers die off and so you have to dead head them and remove
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the dead flowers but most hyacinths now they've induced polyploidy to the point
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where they can't be pollinated and so most.
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Hyacinths are polyploidy and they don't need dead heading so
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you can produce also and then flowers that are
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thicker larger and last longer sounds great doesn't it
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and where was
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i got distracted by thicker larger and last longer yes thicker
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flowers not always the great if you want to dry flowers though if you need to
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dry your flowers without them going rotten then a thicker flower a thicker flower
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bud that's really takes far longer to dry if it takes far longer to dry then
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it's also going to be prone to fungal infection and bud rots and things like this.
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So i said it can be used can also
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be used for pest and disease control some plants some
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polypoly plants are more more resistant to
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pest and disease and some have improved nutrient
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uptake and vice versa the opposite is true so
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you know it's it really needs
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experimentation with your crop to find out which is the case what happens
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when you polyploid them when they turn into tetraploids quatraploid
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hexploids and things like this and it will change depends on the variety that
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you you turn into polyploid or the strain or or the subspecies that you're using
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another good use of polyploidy is to get plants to hybridize that would not
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normally hybridize so So this is very common in cereals where you get,
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say, you couldn't cross a barley directly with a wheat, but if you double the
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chromosome in the other, then you can produce a triticale, which is like a hybrid one.
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And so you could potentially get wild species of different plants and cross
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them with domesticated species.
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And this has been done routinely.
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And it's also happened in the wild as well. So I think there was a guy who discovered
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a plant at Oxford Railway Station.
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And it was a cross between ragwort and something else. Let me check.
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And groundsall. And this was a completely new species, and it was declared as a new species.
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And it was normally hybrids, interspecies hybrids are sterile.
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But this one was fertile because it was induced.
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One of them had polyploidy, or one of the parents had polyploidy.
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So that's an interesting way. instance if you're struggling
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to hybridize a plant or you want to hybridize it someone's said to you that
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this plant and this plant can't be hybridized even though they're in the same
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genus or in the same family perhaps induce polyploid in one of them and match
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the chromosome numbers up find out what the chromosome numbers are in them are
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so the chromosome numbers vary.
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Massively in plants as well so humans it's
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23 chromosomes isn't it and there's in that company that went bust recently
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23andme whereas in plants plants
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have can vary dramatically so the slender goldenweed
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plant has four chromosomes and then
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that can go up to literally thousands of
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chromosomes in ferns ferns must
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spend most of their time making dna to fill
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their cells full of chromosomes don't know why they're
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doing it it's a lot of phosphorus required to do that as well so
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i would imagine fern cultivation requires a lot of phosphorus to
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do that they don't have to make flowers though or seeds ferns do they so
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they they can spend their time making chromosomes that's probably what
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they do for doing their spare time so matching
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up the chromosome number is going to be key plants have a lot of dna anyway
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they've got a lot of extra genes and not least because they produce so many
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extra chemicals and there's a thing called primary metabolism that's what you
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and I do all the things that happen in our bodies is primary metabolism it's basic stuff.
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And then plants, they have all this secondary metabolism. They produce thousands
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and thousands of times more interesting chemicals than we do,
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because they have to protect themselves against, you know, pest and disease,
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and they have to photosynthesize and do all sorts of other things and interact
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with fungi and stuff like that. So they need a lot more DNA.
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Hence the reason why they probably involve polyploidy,
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because they can evolve quickly and they can get extra
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DNA and and reduce different
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things and have different just more plasticity that's
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the word in in science plasticity the ability to mold
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yourself to your environment so that's
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been today's hydroponics daily polyploidy not
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something for the amateur to consider but certainly something for what
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they call them pollen pollen chuckers and plant
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breeders and people who are interested in
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sort of genetic engineering but don't want to set up
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a lab you might want to this would be something i'd be interested in definitely
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if i was you know i had a group of growers and i wanted to produce a plant that
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was really really interesting i'd probably get some oats and crocuses i'd buy
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a cheap food processor from well in the uk you'd probably go to argos i don't
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know what you go to in america.
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And obviously chuck it away after i've finished start experimenting put
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it on some seeds and see if i can produce some wild and wacky flowers
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and fruits and plants and yeah if you.
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Try it if you have tried it with success or failure
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let me know that so that's been polyploidy an
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update on the research we've been doing here i did say we
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would be looking at hops and have us set up in our hop grow room
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to help some of our growers who are hop growers and
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and we were all set to set it up with these fantastic new
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strains of hops and and look
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at propagation and cultivation and reducing
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the stretch and things like this but basically they
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the hop growers turned around and said that the people who control the
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genetics company called charles farham they they
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were they weren't too happy about us getting
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hold of their genetics their prize genetics of was it
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harlequin hops and 321 and things like this
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and i think they thought we were going to be stealing them and propagating them
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and selling to the americans or something like that which
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we weren't going to do but um it would have been nice to do some research on
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their on their hops and we could have got some hops off ebay
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or amazon or you know from a
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garden sensor and things like that but hops are notorious for
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being infected with viruses so i
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don't really want to be bringing viruses into the grow room so we've we've
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had a bit bit of a setback on our hops but that just means there's more grow
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grow room space for our other experiments on black grass nft systems and spring
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onions so that's been hydroponics daily for today it's been polyploidy and yeah
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an interesting one tomorrow what will I talk about?
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I'll talk about micropropagation, I think, because I mentioned the word callus today.
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I said you could put colchicine on calluses in micropropagation.
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Didn't say what callus was, so tomorrow I'll talk about that.
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Thank you very much for listening. Goodbye.