Tissue Culture Partnership

The 21st Century Tissue Culture Partnership (TCP) is a partnership between the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment and the forest industry led by Forest Growers Research Ltd.

The Partnership aims to develop innovative technologies to deliver clonal varieties of radiata pine cost effectively and with a shorter deployment time, overcoming their current high cost and limited availability. Increasing the uptake of high-quality clonal varietals to 40% of the current commercial forest would add another $1 to 1.3 billion per annum to the value of the New Zealand commercial forest growing sector.

Current forest industry tissue culturing approaches require multiple stages and a lot of skilled labour and time. We are pioneering a process for radiata pine which can create an unlimited number of plantlets in fewer steps with fewer hands. We use somatic embryogenesis directly taking the immature zygotic embryos from a green cone, proliferating these cells into thousands of embryos in bioreactors followed by maturation, germination, finishing them off in the nursery before heading into the forest. Our process lends itself to automation, including robotics, so we are applying artificial intelligence and machine learning, both of which enhance accuracy and productivity.

Key Facts

Partners: MBIE, Forest Growers Levy Trust, 7 New Zealand forestry and aligned partners
Programme start: 1 July 2019
MBIE funding over 7 years: $2.8 million
Industry funding over 7 years: $4.2 million
Aligned Scion Strategic Science Investment Funding over 7 years: $1.4 million
Programme Governance Group Chair: Professor Alison Stewart
Programme Manager: Dr Russell Burton
Science Leader: Associate Professor Jana Krajnakova
Science Partners: Scion, New Zealand; Natural Resources Institute of Finland, Finland; Southeastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK), Finland; Georgia Institute of Technology, USA; and University of Otago, New Zealand.

Workstreams and Objectives

Proliferation and maturation: Using semi-solid approaches and novel temporary immersion bioreactors for the high throughput generation of clonal pine plantlets in the laboratory and improving the yields of viable somatic embryos.

Embryo selection and sorting: Using image acquisition, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics to significantly enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of the embryo sorting process. This will form the basis of a high-speed automated process to take somatic embryos from maturation to positioning for germination.

Plant development: Taking clonal plantlets to the real world much faster than is currently possible by optimising physical germination factors and use of mini-plugs for rapid transfer of resilient plantlets to the nursery.

Description of the direct somatic embryogenesis process: