I come from a background in mycology. Since college I've "helped" some friends acquire various strains of fungus that aren't always considered edible. For the past few years I've been holding on to a good collection of laboratory materials that have been sitting in storage. I love doing lab work, but horticulture rarely calls for it. So, I decided to find a happy medium.

Over the past 8 months I've been researching the viability of undergoing the mass production of clones via plant tissue culture.

Not only is PTC a viable way to produce large amounts of clones with the smallest amount of genetic material, it is produced with minimal amounts of energy, nutrients, and risk. The only variable that becomes trivial is time. PTC takes months instead of weeks to produce viable clones for production purposes. However, given an ample amount of investment (time) a technician could produce thousands of clones that can be stored in a fraction of the space of a mother plant for an indefinite amount of time.

Imagine storing the genetics of 50 different mothers in a single college-sized dorm fridge. Or even better, imagine raising 1000 clones for an entire warehouse underneath a single two-bulb fluorescent fixture. It's possible.

To date there is little research available on using PTC to cultivate cannabis. The studies that ARE done, are more focused on applications involved in activating genes in non-THC producing plants, or "supercharging" the THC producing mechanisms in the genetics of cannabis to create more potent genetics.

I have found a few good articles online. Both give good outlines for using different hormones as probable candidates to either educing rooting or the formation of callus. For those of you interested...

http://www.scribd.com/doc/14571756/The-Biotechnology-of-Cannabis-Sativa



They are great reads.

When I get some down time, I'll document on here some of my progress.