Speed of embryo extraction

The only numbers i’ve seen are 200/day by a skilled person. Can anyone beat this time per hour or day or by Don Holman’s lab clamp?

Depends on the rules of engagement. Sterile culture, keeping notes and labels on everything will be the major time-consumer. It’s like cracking American black walnuts. I can crack over 200/ hr, but take rest of the day to get them out.

I’ll take my original post as a given then. So be it. Three days worth of alloted time should cover the endeavor.

Three days worth of alloted time should cover the endeavor.

Hmmm. You might want to get some practice before you commit to a large batch like that. My first successful extraction took about 30 years - give or take a year.

Three rose bushes 50, (preferred 120) good embryos and some rare hips. C-clamp 1-25mm, 1/2 moon drilled in platen grind fine threads to point. A little more practice and go for it. Seems doable and less time than inventing a mass production micro machine for de shelling dried achenes.

C-clamp 1-25mm, 1/2 moon drilled in platen grind fine threads to point.

Sounds about right. Post a photo. A splitter works for part or most of some extractions but get some fingernail clippers too.

There is no way to post photos direct so until a tutor gets here and explains,(everything and why) photos are on hold.

Normally all the hips would be gathered at the same time, which is still too early, but this embryo extraction requires a turn around of thinking. I never thought of seriously using it so only cursorily followed the posts. Why not start on green hips, is after ripening all that important for embryo culture. I’ll look at some throw aways.

lol… that gives a whole new meaning to preemies…

Yeh, i,d be easier to train a bird to do this.

I considered it at one point – that is feed rose seeds to Silky Chickens and plant the “pre-packaged seeds”. I opted to do it the manual way tho… call me chicken :astonished: *awful pun alert :smiley: * Seriously though, sometimes the poo was the size of an egg. That much ammonia/nitrates, etc cant possibly be good for seedlings :confused:

Why not start on green hips, is after ripening all that important for embryo culture.

It’s a complex topic that I plan to address in detail when time permits. The bottom line is basically what you would expect: the most reliable metric for embryo maturity is time. In general, and up to a point, the more time an embryo has to mature the better.

That being said, I have found that embryos are often able to germinate in-vitro without supplemental nutrients (that is to say, by the protocol I have outlined in manual) before the hips from which they came have ripened.

OFTEN sounds good. I’ii also see if the embryos can help themselves somewhat by emerging from half exposure. Saves a LOT of time. Thanks, Neil

I’ii also see if the embryos can help themselves somewhat by emerging from half exposure. Saves a LOT of time.

Fully extracting the embryo is time well spent.

Okay then!

Yep. It is really a two step thing…seed extraction followed by embryo extracton. Both require time and their own “feel” to get it right whichever way you like to “skin the cat”.

Numbers are no so important…it is the % of undamaged extracted embryos you get, that is important.

Damaged embryos must be the number one reason for germination failures IMHO.

George: Speed, percentages and priorities have always played a big roll for me. Sometimes I need to go to work and there is never enough time to do everything necessary so things slid. Other times I just don’t want too, hence the foot dragging. I have to admire your perseverance in exploring the mysteries of why and why not. Your latest was of major interest 1 of 3 and the 1 a maybe. It didn’t click till I seen that. So the first thing when ready is the fast plier method to see how many dead embryos to deal with and adjust from there. After six months in a seed tray and no germination it took 12 achenes to find 1 good one and by the time of the first true leaf two more had germinated naturally but as Paul Bardon said some seedlings die when they touch real dirt, and so it was. So it would be wiser to check the vigor also before a time consuming endeavor and maybe just stick to the rare hips from really good plants. There is going to be a role to be played by embryo extraction and little by little is the way it happens.

The posts today caused a lot of brain storming. Sugar to rot stumps. Micro critters love it. Achenes are wood? Drill hole in half rotten stump and insert achenes then seal.??

My vacuum pump pulls 30" HG vac. > Maybe dry the achenes in old oven for awhile at 80-90 degrees F. Probably not enough volume of gas in the achenes.

Are there any thoughts on this or just blowing smoke.

Neil, I’m not sure what you’ve been reading (or eating) so I don’t quite follow which rabbit hole you were down. But you did prompt me to think of something that might explain some properties of seeds in achenes. Gas diffusion through bulky organs has been studied. The achene, if it is woody, lignified, may be a significant barrier to oxygen diffusion in and carbon dioxide diffusion out from the seed. Work on controlled atmosphere storage of fruits shows that ripening is sensitive to both O2 and CO2 levels. So evacuating the achenes for a while, then letting air back into the chamber, would reduce the CO2 level and increase the O2 level for a while. This might be good or bad. George’s observation of germination in water is pretty surprising if O2 is limiting. But the water, depending on pH, might actually help dissolve out the CO2 if it’s more alkaline than the seed.

You could also rent an oxygen tank intended for emphysema, flush a chamber with seeds inside and see if some germinate faster or slower with pure oxygen than regular air. Need a moist medium of course.

From what I read acids have been tried with unclear results. People talk about wood eating microbes that are naturally in the ground, so it seems to me the more concentrated the microbes, the faster the wood decay. A search of such ready make stump eaters resulted in the merits of using sugar, jams, and such to kill unwanted trees in the garden and the impression was sugar as the multiplying factor for such microbes. Of course a lab culture would be better to control the microbes from eating too much.

As for the vacuum, a balloon would pop given enough stress. It was just a thought that with fast enough stress the achene might do the same. Thanks for the feedback.

And then theres the rock tumblers. Little by little.