Tissue Culture Automation ’101’
Creating a Nursery Industry Standard
Our vision is to be the dominant world-wide supplier of tissue culture automation through the marketing of our Nic-In Systems®. It will achieve this through continued innovation in all plant industries to cover all relevant plant species that can benefit from automation.
Nico van Rooijen 2017
Our mission is to build on the turn-key automated tissue culture system we have developed for Australian landscape plants creating the industry standard in other major PTC laboratories and nurseries globally.
The Solution
Nic-In insert trays with individual PTC cells
Nic-In insert trays filled with tissue cultures
Transplanting tissue cultures from Nic-In insert trays
Freshly transplanted tissue cultures
Reliable development of transplanted tissue cultures
The Innovation
- Insert trays with individual Plant Tissue Culture (PTC) cells providing an x-y axis for automation and precision planting.
- Insert trays with holes in the bottom of the cells to give consistent, uniform and quicker PTC growth from even distribution of hormones and nutrients.
- Insert trays with different sized cells to suit a wide range of PTC from the floriculture, horticulture, agriculture, forestry, and cannabis industries.
- Insert trays with individual cells which give certainty in plant numbers per PTC container overcoming customer claims and disputes.
- Insert trays with arms (wings) giving superior protection of both commercial and ‘elite’ PTC during transportation
- Insert trays and container that are compatible, efficient and cost effective within existing PTC laboratories
- Insert trays and container that are compatible with existing PTC nursery transplanters used by plant industries globally
- Insert trays and a PTC system that is protected through extensive international patents and trademarks in the major global tissue culture markets and supply from low cost countries through patented cross-border provisions.
The Cost Benefit
- A transplant system which initially cost €0.01 per PTC and saves up to 30% in energy costs and space in the laboratory.
- A transplanting system through PTC automation in the nursery that saves at least 10x the labour compared to manual planting.
- A transplanter system with planting heads ‘grabbing’ the cell agar plug and not the delicate PTC, thus causing no bruising or damage to the delicate tissue culture plantlet.
- A transplanting system which keeps the PTC agar plug attached when transplanting and in doing so eliminating ‘transplant shock’ and plant losses in many species.
- A transplanting system that uses beneficial inoculum for IPM which also improves PTC root and plant growth.
- A transplanting system that improves the strike rate of some PTC species that are harder to ‘de-flask’.
- A transplanting system that enables better planting depth control in the PTC nursery plug trays leading to uniform growth.
- A transplanting system which shortens the growing time of many PTC species in the laboratory by 5-7 days and in the nursery by 7-10 days.
The Payback
The spreadsheet below compares the total annual cost of manual transplanting tissue culture with automatic transplanting. The spreadsheet makes various assumptions but if you want to explore the cost comparison using your own assumptions you can click on the spreadsheets or simply click here.
We offer comprehensive support covering all aspects of successful implementation of Nic-In Systems®.
Technical Support
Nic-In Systems®
461 Heatherton Road
Clayton South VIC 3169
AUSTRALIA
Nico van Rooijen
+61 (0) 402 838 281
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Laboratory Support
Lab Associates B.V.
Bosschendijk 215
4731 Oudenbosch
THE NETHERLANDS
Nick Verhoef
+31 (0) 165 31 86 16
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Transplanter Support
TTA B.V.
Van Beukelaarweg 45
2971 VL Bleskensgraaf
THE NETHERLANDS
Geert Maris
+31 (0) 620 9999 45
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.