Washing

Washing is frequently used in the preparation of grossly contaminated (i.e., wild-collected) material prior to its introduction into tissue culture. It is common to remove plant products for tissue culture from greenhouse, field, or wild environments, which are then washed in running tap water to remove gross contamination. For particularly large samples, it is possible to do a tear-down, and remove progressively younger layers of tissue either manually or with a blade in order to reach relatively clean tissues.

From smaller samples, either collected individually or procured through the techniques described above, samples may be washed or disinfected by placing them in appropriately-sized containers which are filled with a disinfection solution, and a wetting agent (if desired), and agitated for some period of time. In this manner, one may use a relatively dilute disinfection solution, and place the container on a shaker table or similar for several hours if necessary to procure clean cultures.