MICROPROPAGATION MEDIUM COMPOSITION ONLINE SENSING SYSTEM-DEVELOPMENT

A plant micropropagation system has been developed with the capacity o f allowing periodic, automatic, aseptic monitoring of culture medium c omposition. The system was able to sample automatically culture medium from a liquid/membrane bioreactor without compromising asepsis or dis turbing plant tissue. Media samples were analyzed to determine sucrose and dextrose concentrations. Bioreactor media was automatically reple nished to compensate for volumes lost due to sampling. For a 28-day cu lture period using Stage 1 Nicotiana tabacum (tobacco) explants as a m odel culture system, media sucrose concentration decreased with a corr esponding increase in dextrose concentration and tissue fresh weight.