9 Feb 2021

5 Advantages of Plant Preservative Mixture (PPM™)

Anjali Singh, MS

As a content and community manager, I leverage my expertise in plant biotechnology, passion for tissue culture, and writing skills to create compelling articles, simplifying intricate scientific concepts, and address your inquiries. As a dedicated science communicator, I strive to spark curiosity and foster a love for science in my audience.

Table of Contents

Contaminations Overview

The contaminations in the lab are always worrying. We never know the stage we see our culture spoiled from contamination. Many people use antibiotics in the culture media to get rid of contaminators; do you know that antibiotics not only negatively affect the growth and development of your cultures but also don't secure your culture with 100% efficiency? Some microbes resistant to antibiotics arise again and cause serious threats to your cultures.

What can be done in this situation? The solution to this major contamination problem is a Plant preservative mixture (PPM™). It's a trademark product of Plant Cell Technology which is now being used in plant tissue culture labs worldwide. PPM™ is the primary option due to the extensive advantages it offers to cultured plants. In this article, we will learn five major advantages of using PPM in your daily tissue culture routines.

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Advantages of Using PPM in Tissue Culture

1. Protects the Cultures from all kinds of Contamination

Contamination in tissue culture occurs from different sources and different types of contaminant attack or cultures. It’s difficult to find one solution for all these contamination problems. However, this problem can be easily tackled by PPM™, a robust broad-spectrum formulation for elimination contamination from plant tissue culture. PPM™ protects culture from all kinds of contamination: airborne, water, or human-induced. It targets bacteria and fungi in the plant tissue culture media and the explant tissue. PPM™ is an efficient fighter of endophytic bacteria or microbes that live inside the plant tissues.

2. Doesn’t Alter the Original Genetic Makeup of the Plant

Some of the major applications of tissue culture are the conservation of genes, germinating haploid plants, and growing hybrid plants. The one way used by culturists to avoid contamination is the use of antibiotics. The result of antibiotics also alters the genetic pool of the plant. If maintaining the genetic makeup of the plant is your primary requirement, then the use of antibiotics is clearly not a solution. So, what should you do? What’s the other way?

The other solution to the above-mentioned problem is the use of PPM™ in your culture medium. PPM™ only helps in protecting your culture from the contaminants and doesn't disturb the genetic makeup of the plant!

3. Doesn't Negatively Impact the Growth of Cultures

What’s your major concern during the tissue culture of plants? The perfect growth and development of the plants and their good health throughout different phases of tissue culture, right? But this goal is majorly affected by contamination. Here, we will talk about the impact of both antibiotics and PPM™, to tackle this challenge.

Culturists, while using antibiotics in their culture media, have observed that antibiotics protect the plant to some extent while also negatively impacting the growth of the plants. In some species of plants, it’s been observed that it leads to abnormal callus formation or aberrant tissue formation. In this case, PPM™ is preferred whose one and only target is to fight with different classes of contaminants. It neither disturbs the genetic makeup of the plant nor affects the growth of the callus or explants in tissue culture.

4. Minimal Amount is Required

Tissue culture is an expensive process. Although PPM™ is expensive, the value is really in the amount of PPM™ used to obtain a positive result. PPM™ is an effective solution to contamination problems with very few or no limitations (if used in a suitable amount). Generally, 1-2 ml of PPM™ is required in 1L of the growth media and one liter of the growth media if you use 25 ml of media per culture vessel. Then, you can prepare 40 culture vessels. The PPM™ is available at a reasonable price at plant cell technology in different volumes. You can check out the PCT store for more information.

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5. Can be Autoclaved with Other Chemicals

PPM™ is added to the growth media before sterilization or post sterilization before dispensing into culture vessels. The best characteristic of PPM is that it’s autoclavable at 1.05 kg/cm2 (15 psi) and 121°C for 20 minutes. But, PPM™ should be added post-autoclave to media containing proteins, before dispensing to culture vessels.

So, now you are aware of the major five advantages of using plant preservative mixture in your tissue culture routine. You can check our PCT store for more information on PPM or write to us if there’s something you want to know about PPM or any other products of plant cell technology. Happy culturing!!