I'm an undergrad student in horticulture at NCSU and I've started a few research projects. The first involves mutagenesis of Sarracenia. Basically I am using cobalt-60 radiation from a nuclear reactor, colchicine, and oryzalin (Surflan) to induce mutagenesis in seeds of 10 species of Sarracenia. I will post more about this in the pitcher plant section. The second is a study of the effects of wounding, cytokinin, and auxin on leaf cuttings of D. capensis. My partner and I took thirty cuttings for each of the five treatments. So in total 150 cuttings. The first treatment is the control in which we just lay the cuttings on the media which is a 1:1 peat and milled sphagnum mix. The second treatment was a wounding treatment where we used a razor blade to make a cut down the mid-vein of the leaf. The third treatment was a wounding treatment where we used a needle to poke holes on either side of the midvein covering most of the leaf. The fourth treatment is a liquid cytokinin dip where we dipped the entire leaf into a 250ppm cytokinin formulation. The fifth treatment is a liquid auxin dip where we dipped the entire leaf into a 500ppm auxin formulation.
We have checked on the cuttings every week and on Tuesday we found buds forming on a few of the cuttings. I can't say which treatment is yielding the best results because truthfully I dont know . The treatments are labeled randomly with numbers to reduce bias. However we have some leaves that are producing up to 11 buds on a single leaf. I checked again today and the wounding treatment using the razor blade is the treatment that has produce the most buds. The control has not even begun to produce buds yet. I think that is some promising information. I'll keep you all updated when there is more information!
We have checked on the cuttings every week and on Tuesday we found buds forming on a few of the cuttings. I can't say which treatment is yielding the best results because truthfully I dont know . The treatments are labeled randomly with numbers to reduce bias. However we have some leaves that are producing up to 11 buds on a single leaf. I checked again today and the wounding treatment using the razor blade is the treatment that has produce the most buds. The control has not even begun to produce buds yet. I think that is some promising information. I'll keep you all updated when there is more information!