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. 

Application of LED light technology to enhance plant growth.

The Toolangi Elite laboratory is evaluating new light management technologies to achieve the optimal plantlet growth and the improvements on minituber production.

A world leading potato variety germplasm genetic resource centre – an Australian first!

The establishment of a DNA library of all potato cultivars held in the tissue culture collection at Toolangi. When required the DNA library may be used as a reference database for DNA fingerprinting technologies to identify a given potato cultivar and/or the protection of intellectual property.

Installation of a new dedicated purpose-built growth room for the in-vitro tissue culture collection.

Toolangi Elite has Australia’s largest potato collection with over 430 public and private potato varieties and is an important genetic resource for the industry. To ensure the tissue culture collection is maintained in high health condition in a purpose-built growth room for secure and optimal storage of invitro material; all material is pathogen tested prior to entry and tubes are barcoded to further ensure variety purity. The new growth room utilises state-of-the-art LED light technology and is climatic controlled for longevity and stability of the collection.

Media improvement to produce tissue culture.

The Toolangi Elite team are conducting internal experiments on the artificial media used to produce tissue culture. This is based on recent scientific literature published showing that tissue culture media can be modified to improve invitro plantlet growth and minituber production.

Application of precision technology and remote management for better minituber production

Toolangi Elite has installed specialty irrigation scheduling and cloud-based sensor technology that monitors all aspects of irrigation including water filtration and UV treatment systems which supply the polyhouses used to produce the minitubers.

The leading sensor technology has been applied to the minituber cool store to remotely monitor climatic conditions inside the store as well as monitor the associated infrastructure for any faults or errors.

The remote monitoring technology on both the irrigation systems and cool store instantly alerts staff to any key issues through email and SMS alerts, ultimately providing a risk management solution which safeguards production. The use of remote management technologies to monitoring and the capture of accurate data enables Toolangi Elite to better benchmark quality assurance and product performance. Importantly, the optimistation of storage conditions enables the better management of the physiological age of minitubers.

Solar systems at Toolangi Elite are fully operational and all the power required to run the cool store and the majority of the polyhouses is generated by renewable energy.

In addition, two standby generators (110kw and 60kw) have been installed which can effectively provide power in the event of a mains power failure. This ensures that all production including tissue culture and cool storage have secure power.

Toolangi Elite is committed to sustainability and is in the final stages of developing an independently audited Environmental Management System (ISO 14001) to underpin the processes and procedures and further strengthen Toolangi Elite’s environmental credentials.

Single use plastic planter bags or pots are essential to maintain the high health status of the seed and maintain high plant health standards. Toolangi Elite recycles offsite all plastic bags and pots used for growing G0 minitubers in the polyhouses. Annually, this saves over 70,000 black plastic planter bags and over 5,000 pots from going to landfill.

Toolangi Elite utilises metal and cardboard recycling which aligns with the requirements for the Environmental Management Systems and enhances the profitability and sustainability of the business.

All soil-less potting mix is only used once for minituber production, it is then donated to local gardeners.