I am fascinated by orchids and that happens to be my area of interest. Learning foldscopy at a workshop @ GGDSD, Chandigarh, It was now time for exploring. I requested the foldscope team @ GGDSD Chandigarh for a visit to Botany Museum and Orchid propagation facility at Botany department, Panjab University, Chandigarh.

I acknowledge Dr. Promila Pathak for the samples procured for my foldscope explorations that would follow in the subsequent posts.

Orchid seeds are very small and contain little food reserves. A single seed capsule may contain 1,000 to as many as 1 lakh seeds. Sowing the seed in vitro facilitates germination of immature seed. It is easy to sterilize the capsule rather than the individual seed obtained from a splitted capsule. The educational visit aimed at understanding an overall view and to understand the process and working system of plant tissue culture facility right from lab to greenhouse.

The group of 50 was initiated by a welcome address and after dividing into 3 groups, the students were escorted to different sections of the plant tissue culture lab which included the media preparation room, autoclaving room, quality control lab and growth lab. Students learnt about sterilization procedures, culturing techniques, quality control methods, growth of plant tissue culture in lab.

The students were also taken to the green houses, where they observed the plant lets that were subjected to the hardening process. The students procured samples of various plants being propagated there especially the orchids for foldscopy.

The intention of this field trip was to make the students understand the significance of plant tissue culture techniques for micropropagation of flowers that are difficult to multiply via seeds and also explore the foldscope opportunities in study of Orchids.

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