06/ FOUNDATIONSC / IN VITRO PROPAGATIONestablished elsewhere → untested here

One fragment of shoot.Divided again and again.

Un fragmento de brote, dividido una y otra vez.

What follows is the technique, described generically: how a fragment of tissue is made to produce shoots instead of stem, and what it costs at each of the four places it fails. It is not a record of anything this project has done. No explant has been placed and no culture exists.

The film

Twenty-two stops on one path, from a single cut fragment to a tray of hardened plants. Click a stop; where a transition has a clip, it plays and lands on the next frame, and the labels appear once the picture is still.

01

Raw residue

ONE FRAGMENT A POPULATION
STOPPED · 01 / 22

The mechanism, in words

A plant cell retains the genetic instructions for the whole plant. That single property — totipotency — is what the technique exploits; everything else is housekeeping around it.

A fragment of shoot is surface-disinfected and set on a defined nutrient medium carrying cytokinin. A high cytokinin-to-auxin ratio suppresses apical dominance and pushes the tissue toward producing more shoots rather than one taller one. Where a cutting gives one plant, an explant gives a cluster.

That cluster is divided and re-cultured, and that is the cycle. Each pass multiplies the shoot count instead of adding to it, so the increase across cycles is a ratio, not an increment — geometric, not additive. Shoots are then moved to an auxin medium to root, and finally acclimatised: out of sterile, saturated, sugar-fed culture into real air, real light and real soil, while stomata and cuticle begin to function.

Four places it fails, and they are not incidental: contamination at initiation, phenolic browning of the explant, rooting, and survival through hardening. The losses concentrate at the end.

What this does not do

NOT THIS

  • It does not replace conventional propagation. Nursery and field propagation is the baseline that makes any comparison meaningful.
  • It does not modify anything: no genetic or molecular characterisation of any kind, no sequencing — including for identification — no extraction of compounds, no transformation.
  • It does not guarantee a plant in the ground. Survival through hardening is a documented constraint, not a solved one.
  • It does not move material both ways. Nothing biological returns to the archipelago.

WHAT IS ESTABLISHED ELSEWHERE

  • Plant tissue culture as a discipline — totipotency, growth-regulator control of morphogenesis, serial subculture.
  • Consolidated micropropagation literature exists for cultivated congeners of some target genera — a starting point, with species-specific optimisation required at disinfection, rooting and regulator dose. Not directly transferable.
  • Prior in vitro work on Galápagos endemics from 2006, which did not progress beyond establishment. Its contamination and phenolic-browning results belong to that work, not to this project.
  • Acclimatisation protocols for other narrow-range endemics held in botanic-garden programmes.

What is untested here

ZERO ACROSS THIS TRACK

  • No bench work has begun. No explant placed, no flask inoculated, no culture exists — for any species, at any stage.
  • No plant material has been acquired or received, from any source.
  • No collection authorisation exists.
  • No contamination rate, multiplication rate, rooting percentage or survival figure has been generated here. None can exist.
  • The laboratory in Galápagos does not exist. Nothing has been ordered and nothing has been built.

OPEN GAP CARRIED BY SHOT 21

  • For some of the target genera no acclimatisation protocol is published at all. It is the deepest gap on this panel, it sits at the step where losses concentrate, and naming it is worth more than concealing it.

Where the commercial line runs

The commercial boundary runs along the invasive/endemic line. Invasive biomass may be valorized by a separate company. Endemic propagation is GHRI's alone and carries a binding commitment not to commercialise it: no propagation for commercial purposes, no transfer to third parties, and a waiver of patent and of all commercial exploitation rights. Material moves one way; what returns is the protocol — free, unconditional, unlimited in time, and published with negative results included.