INOCULATION AND TISSUE DISTRIBUTION IN PILOT-SCALE PLANT-ROOT CULTUREBIOREACTORS

Inoculation of large-scale plant root culture reactors can be carried out by briefly homogenizing bulk root tissue, followed by aseptic tran sfer as a slurry to the reactor. Uniform root distribution can be achi eved in bioreactors by entrapment of the growing root inoculum onto pr ocess packing elements (e.g. distillation packings), randomly distribu ted within the reactor, in a bubble column operation. These two techni ques have been successfully used to inoculate a 14 L pilot-scale react or which is subsequently operated as a trickle bed reactor.