NASC

Please note that we have no commercial arrangements with any of these companies apart from using their products. Information posted here may have been taken from the web and should not necessarily be assumed to be complete or up-to-date, this information is just intended to be helpful not instructive.

• Hypoline m

  For routine control of sciarid fly and thrips pupae, we currently use Hypoline m (Hypoaspis miles / Stratiolaelaps scimitus). The mites feed on sciarid fly larvae and thrips pupae. Adults live for several months and survive up to 50 days without food, making them ideal in situations of low pest populations. Additional information about this product can be found here. We recommend to apply the mites as soon as the seeds have been sown. The use rate is approx. 100 mites per square meter.; a 25,000 mites tube is enough to cover 250-300 12-cm pots.

• Zwapak flower sleeves

  We use commercial flower sleeves at three stages in the propagation of arabidopsis:

  1. As a 'personal propagator' for the germinating seeds and the young seedlings.
  2. As a mechanism for ensuring independence and preventing crossing between lines (also increasing the density that arabidopsis can be grown at by introducing a self-forming support for the branching inflorescences). See (picture).
  3. As an enclosure to assist in the collection of seeds from the dry plants to minimise chaff dispersal and to contain the seeds (this is very favourably received from an ACGM containment perspective).

  The flower sleeves that we use are from zwapak [http://www.zwapak.nl] in Holland. They come in a variety of heights and sizes that can be used in concert with your particular size of pot.

• Glassine bags

  For seed storage we currently use glassine bags. These are manufactured from a smooth, glossy paper and are air and grease resistant.

  Glassine bags have several advantages over traditional Eppendorf tubes when it comes to storing Arabidopsis seeds, including no static charge problems, they are easy to write on and, most importantly, they do not leak.

  We have been using them for the last 8 years with excellent results. Additional information about glassine bags can be found here.

• Automated pot filler

  Because we may have to sow hundreds or thousands of pots in a short period of time, we use an automated method that has made the process far more efficient - please click on the image to play the movie (less than 1 minute).

Please see our protocols page for more details.