3. Plate Your Plants
PLACING YOUR PLANT CLIPPINGS IN THE PETRI DISHES
Plating your samples is one of the most important parts of the process. By preparing your samples correctly, you’re able to encourage the microbes that live on and inside the plant material out into an environment where we can start to identify them.
When you’re making the plates, think about where the microbes you want to amplify would be living. If it’s a microbe that might live on the surface of a leaf, make sure that the leaf makes good contact with the surface of the plate.
If the microbe is intra/intercellular, make sure that the inside flesh of the leaf is exposed to the agar, this will increase the capacity for the microbe to grow out from its normal environment, and onto the plate.
Equipment:
Tweezers
Scissors
Alcohol wipes (optional)
Ingredients:
Agar plates
Bleach solution (10%)
Process:
1) Prepare the workspace by wiping down all surfaces with bleach solution and lighting your flame.
2) Take your previously harvested plant cutting and identify what part you want to take endophytes from.
3) Using tweezers, take the plant part and dip it into the bleach solution. Swirl it around for about 30 seconds and remove.
4) If you have purified water you can rinse it off, otherwise just let it drip dry for a minute.
5) Wipe the scissors with alcohol wipes, or clean with bleach.
6) Cut a section of the plant using the tweezers and scissors.
7) Carefully open the lid of the plate, beside the flame, and place the plant cutting in the centre. Make sure the plant is securely adhered to the sticky agar.
8) Turn the plate upside down and write salient information on the base.
9) Seal with tape and then place in a cool, dark environment for growing.