Re: Cloning top lines.

In a message dated 6/12/99 12:01:17 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
indbio@disknet.com writes:

>   HE: I disagree. The vine clones are the ideal clone. When working with
>  embryos one does get deformities. When sweetpotato is propagated by vine
>  cuttings all the progeny have perfect orange color. 
>    When one uses storage roots to get slips via somatic embryogeneisis
>  (sp) some off color roots are produced. I agree this is not excatly the
>  embryo that you had in mind. I will not accept your embryo premise until
>  you provide research reference supporting your view.
>    The use of vine and other cuttings has worked for thousands of years
>  and in nature for millions of years (willow trees, onion bulblets, etc). 
>    I agree with you that clones greatly improve research and I support
>  you fully in you efforts to bring this suggestion to AG research. When
>  you looks a field of any crop produced by cuttings (The superb cloninc
>  method) from a single mother plant one sees that the plants do differ
>  due to local fertility, pruning, etc. as you have been saying. 

Well cutting probably would be a step in the right direction, if they can be 
transported to different local sites, with different cultural methods, as 
well as different climates with these same cultural methods, etc. Each plant 
will actually be the SAME plant, literally. BUT each "plant" will always 
remain a vine, which happens to have enough taproots to support itself 
independantly. As anyone knows, each vine of a plant is different. A true 
full clone, from the embryo stage would be theoretically fully the same as 
it's other clones, with the same genetic program for how many vines it will 
have, where the nodes will be, the same tendencies for each vine, etc.
What you are saying it that due to mutations it might not be possible to 
create a true clone. That could be a problem, I guess. But like I said, the 
cuttings would not really be clones, since each vine will keep it's unique 
genetic program that it had when it was whole. Each vine on equally cared for 
pumpkin plants will produce different sized fruit, different shape, color, 
etc. So it is hard to really have a control to go by.
As for a method of cuttings, you could simply put a leaf node of a young 
plant on a container of media and nutrients, (probably soil would be best 
since the roots are too sensitive to ship bareroot anyway), let the taproots 
grow into the container, then detatch from the main plant, and transport to a 
different site. It might be best if different cuttings of the same vine were 
used, but I don't know how accurate the term "clone" would be for this, but 
who knows. It is probably the closest the average person can come, for now!

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