CellulaTM Growth Chamber
Patent Number: PH-1-2020-000071
Patent Title: CellulaTM Growth Chamber
Description
A Plant Tissue Culture Growth Chamber that aims to aid the mass production of coffee and makapuno plantlets in a controlled, optimized, and suitable environmental conditions such as temperature, photoperiod, and relative humidity (RH) which is crucial for plant growth and development.
Innovative Features and Benefits:
Coffee (Coffea sp.) and Makapuno (Cocos nucifera L.) are two of the most valuable crops in the Philippines. Due to the limited supply of planting materials, mass propagation of coffee and makapunoseedlings are now being done by many institutions through tissue culture technique. Tissue culture allows the production of "true-to-type" planting material wherein it acquired the exact traits of the mother plant. However, the efficiency of existing tissue culture laboratories in the country is relatively low due to poorly controlled environmental factors and notably airborne microbes and other elements that lead to a high contamination rate. The introduction of growth chamber with an artificially controlled environment in the conventional system of embryo culture propagation would be shortened expectedly and will greatly increase the survival rate of seedlings in the in-vitro stage.
The CellulaTM Growth Chamber is a locally-fabricated Plant Tissue Culture Growth Chamber which provides a suitable environmental condition for tissue-cultured coffee and makapuno plantlets. A programmable logic controller (PLC) controls and maintains the environmental parameters such as temperature, relative humidity, and photoperiod inside the chamber which is crucial for the growth of the plant embryos. The equipment can hold a maximum of 384 plantlets per operation. A plant germination efficiency of 92.5% and 7.50% plant contamination were observed based on the conducted performance evaluation.
Applications:
The CellulaTM Growth Chamber is primarily developed to enhance the growth, increase the germination efficiency, and decrease the plant contamination of the micropropagated coffee and makapuno plantlets. This equipment can be used to other tissue-cultured crops such as banana, cacao, sugarcane, root crops, and other high-value crops.
Business Development Opportunity:
The growing demand for quality planting materials of coffee, makapuno, and other high-value crops exhibiting the "true-to-type" traits of their mother plants opens opportunities for the increasing interest of government and private entities to put-up income-generating tissue culture laboratories. Typical laboratories have growth rooms for their tissue-cultured plants which are prone to contamination and was observed to have lower plant germination rate. Commercially-available growth chambers are not affordable and not cost-efficient for mass production. The introduction of the CellulaTM Growth Chamber, a localized plant tissue culture growth enhancement technology in the tissue culture laboratories offers comparable technical performance at a much cheaper purchase price than the commercially-available ones. Considering the number of tissue culture laboratories in the country, the production of this locally-developed equipment will have good market potential.
Interested in this IP?