Record Tissue Culture production

Management and the Board are very proud of the talented team at Toolangi Elite. While COVID-19 restrictions may restrict us from celebrating their achievement locally, it is important the organisation celebrates and acknowledges their tremendous effort!!

The Toolangi Elite team had a major achievement on Wednesday 19th August, 2020. The cutting team of Lea Craig, Jacqui Farr and Larissa Coridas had an amazing effort, collectively cutting tissue culture plants with an average of 2209 plants (per operator) for a 1 day period. For the record, the individual achievement was:

Lea Craig                     plants cut 2362

Jacqui Farr                   plants cut 2250

Larissa Coridas           plants cut 2015

Total plants cut in one day = 6,627 

This is an excellent achievement and recognition is well deserved. It also means that the tissue culture team will reach their target over of 15,000 plants for the week. 

This achievement did not just happen in isolation, the tissue culture team have been busy implementing the new barcode tracking system, making media for the tissue culture plants and maintaining the tissue culture collection (in the new incubator). Albeit dealing with the new challenges on COVID-19 restrictions!! It is also very important to note that environmental contamination of tissue culture in the laboratory is extremely low and well maintained by the tissue culture team – meaning we have very clean tissue culture and efficient production systems.

Outdoor team at Toolangi Elite

The outdoor Toolangi team have been harvesting minitubers and grading and counting orders using the new database tracking system which counts and barcodes all bags of minitubers. The schedule will have the team soon planting for 2020/21 supply in the coming two weeks. So the whole team is in full swing with all activities, planting harvesting grading and counting. With backpackers Nadia and Aaron, now returned to The Netherlands, we have new local team members Stephanie Mackenzie, Rebecca Granato and Darcy French working the outdoor production areas with Mark Wardzynski. Mark Wardzynski also works in the laboratory as another star tissue culture technician.