X-ray Mutagenesis on Cactus
The title is misleading, I just haven't figured out the best way to organize my site yet. I'm thinking of removing the whole Projects "Group" and instead mainly rely on "Categories" aka: tags, like xray. I do plan on exposing some seeds to some x-rays sometime soon, I've been just working on so much at once. Desperate distraction!
1/25/20
This is the first time trying to germinate cactus seeds (which I hear can germinate in about 2 weeks), I'm trying 4 different varieties re-using disposable food containers. No x-ray exposure yet!
I also received the pereskiopsis cuttings today (7!) so I can grow rootstock for grafting when the time comes:
02/08/20
The pereskiopsis have begun to grow new leaves, I checked root growth and saw 3-4mm roots on one of the plants.
The hybrid Peruvianus x Pachanoi eBay seeds germinated pretty well, the pure Peruvianus cross seeds weren't germinating so I hit them with the 50ppm GA3 spray that I've been hitting everything with a couple days in a row and I just saw germination start yesterday (about 2 days after the GA3 spray, only 2 seeds).
The "Graham's nipple cactus" was a VERY easy germination. They're really nice looking growing all bulbous next to one another. I'm definitely going to pop these with the machine sometime soon. Maybe do a whole tray with each of the quadrants being a different amount of x-ray exposure.
The barrel cactus hasn't done a thing. So I just put about 5ml of 250ppm GA3 solution all over that quadrant. I examined a seed and it looked boring as ever.
I've got all the implements to do a good job grafting: scalpel, Adson forceps, the locking ones so I can try and be safe working with the scalpel blades.
03/04/20
I've done about 5 grafts in the past week:
The first one I tried was just a small pup removed from a lady fingers cactus. This was actually the hardest scion because of all the mature spike clusters. I'm still not sure if it's accepted the graft or not yet, looks okay.
A few barrel cactus seeds germinated, but I ended up steaming a bunch of the seedlings (barrel and others in the same container) to death when I put them outside in the sun :( I also burned my Stapelia Gigantea by putting it out in the sun after it had been under a grow light during it's flowering. Learning the hard way!
05/09/20
Here's a picture of the grafts so far, I'm getting comfortable enough with germinating and grafting seeds to start x-ray exposing some soon!
Tags: xray