Having just read the 2009 article on Arundinaria gigantea propagation, it looks like a 1 hour soak in a dilute solution of BAP (6 Benzylaminopurine) was able to induce shooting from 90% of dormant buds on 2-3 node A. gigantea rhizome pieces. They had the best luck with rhizome pieces harvested in January and Febuary, as opposed to March and April... I wonder if anyone has tried this method for different types of bamboo, especially those that are difficult to grow?

I'm thinking that single node cuttings could be micro propagated in sterile culture with good success, since this method excludes contaminants that could be limiting.

At first read I was trying to figure out what 90% of 2-3 was, but then I realized that it probably meant that 90% of the total number of buds on all of the rhizomes in the study.

_________________
Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

Right. Maybe I wasn't very clear there!

Paul, the issue with small pieces of rhizome cuttings is not necessarily getting them to shoot but that there is so very little energy that it will take FOREVER to get them to size up, particularly A gigantea I think, it is slow even with large pieces. So I think that you can get multiple plants this way but will have to be very patient to see them develop - way more patient than I am! Fargesia rufa grows in a manner which lends it well to micro prop but thus far I have never seen a picture of a well developed micro prop Phyllostachys or Arundinaria. Perhaps they are out there but where?

_________________
Brad Salmon, zone 5b/6 Southern Indiana
Winters -20 to -25C. Summers 30 to 35C , humid. 115 cm annual precipitation, frost free from May through early October. 259.3 meters elevation. Growing 150+ species. http://www.needmorebamboo.com/

Fargesia is definitely one of the easiest things to propagate since they only require a root hair and shoot bud to get a plant so the species does matter, but I think something like Benzylaminopurine might be useful to get a young division to establish and put out growth more quickly given that it does have enough energy stored up.

Its only like $5 on ebay so I might give this stuff a shot.

_________________
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

Good news about the low price of BAP... Will be interesting to hear if you have luck with it Steve.

Brad- The idea of culturing small pieces of rhizome isn't the quick growth rate that can be expected (it will be quicker than it would be in soil, but still slow). Rather, it is the fact that you can regenerate 100's or 1000's of small plants very quickly (where you would be lucky to get 1 in non-sterile conditions) which can then be maintained in culture, where they have no competition with contaminating bacteria or fungi or insects, and used to further generate 1000's of additional plants... It's the manipulation of hormones combined with sterile conditions that allows multiple shoots, rapid (relatively) growth, and quick multiplication of plants that could not happen in soil.

You can see how you can generate 1000's of plants from a single rhizome node. Given a few years you could establish 100,000's of plants including larger, fully adapted, gallon (or larger) sized plants which could then be used in horticulture or to reestablish wild populations. Of course, you have to use some different genotypes so you're not just establishing large tracts of what is, essentially, a single individual!

Oh, and the papers on Phyllostachys culture exist, it's just that they are published almost exclusively in Chinese and not readily available...

Ok- Paul goes off on another tangent...