Virginia Tech Day Trip - Candice Dalton

Virginia Tech Plant Tissue Culture Lab    

 Our trip for the day at Virginia Tech, started off at Virginia Tech's Plant Tissue Culture Lab. Parker Laimbeer and Kendall Upshaw were our tour guides for the "Potato Kingdom" as Mr. Laimbeer called it. They focus on tissue culture which is the maintenance to grow plants from tissue or cells. The lab does tissue cultures to grow plants to maturity quicker and take cuttings to clone plants instead of through the process of going through the seed method. Facilities germination of low percent seeds. Such as bananas and seedless watermelon are sterile and has to go through tissue culture to be produced if not these fruits would have produced seeds. They also look at Anther Culture with is the redirecting of pollen to form an embryo. At Tech they use Genomics/Bioinformatics which is RNA-seq which is messenger RNA sequencing of molecular mapping. This process is not done as often as the others due to being so expensive.
       In the labs they worked on tomatoes, potatoes and other plants, primarily potatoes are their focus now. Their current focuses are first, Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium, they work with fourteen countries in the focus of sequenced potato genome. Second, is Iron and Zinc Acquisition and third focus is Anthocyamins that look at the colorful antioxidants. In the labs they are culturing numerous plants, as well as, in the Growth Chambers that are automatic watering system and temperature change. The plants in the chambers must stay at twenty degrees Celsius during the day and changes to sixteen degrees Celsius at night.

Virginia Tech Plant Disease Clinic 

     Our second stop for the day was to the Plant Disease Clinic, where they work with the Extension Agent personnel and we were able to do a hands-on lab. Mary Ann Hansen and Elizabeth Bush was there to help us with our labs and gave us a brief information session of pathogens that affect plants. Some pathogens that kill plants are biotic and abiotic. Biotic pathogens can be fungal, bacteria, viruses, and nematodes. Abiotic pathogens are non-living factors such as extreme temperatures, environmental such as pollutions, animal damage and insects. Insects are the most common abiotic problem. Regular patterns are normally known for abiotic problems but random patterns indicates biotic problems. Symptoms are not a one to one disease and disorder way of knowing what it is. There are similar signs and symptoms for different diseases but some are known. If the symptom is a Mosaic or Mottle it is an irregular pattern of  indistinct light and dark green areas therefore shown as a virus and tests can be run to figure out which virus is causing the plant to problems. We were able to look at four different kinds of plant disorders and learn about common plant disease and disorders in our area.

Insect Diagnostic Lab

     Our third stop for the day was to the Insect Diagnostic lab, where Eric Day toured us of their facilities and insect collection. They work with the Extension Agencies by doing diagnostic backup. They look at pests on various plants such as cotton and fruit trees. They look at Port Samples from different ports, the most common insect is the Wood Beetle that is carried on the crates that are transported on the pallets at the ports. Common problems in the area are the Thousand Canker disease on the Black Walnut especially in the Richmond area but they are not sure yet of the extent of damage in Virginia but they are very harsh in Colorado. Stink Bugs are a problem for farmers that raise grains, especially the Brown marmorated stink bug. The other bug that has become a common problem is the Kudzu bug that is state wide and kills kudzu and soybeans are especially harmed. 

      We toured the insect collection at the Price Fork Research Center that started in 1890. The collection has 700,000 insects and 1000 new specimens are added each year. They keep the insects in cabinets to prevent any sun damage. They had numerous Napthalene due to being parasites to other bugs. They identify the insects using previous identified insects. On the Tech campus we observed Ash trees that are endangered due to the Ash Burrow Beetle. 

Nematode Assay Clinic 

    Nematodes are unsegmented microscopic ground worms, 99.1% of nematodes are microscopic. The longest nematode was twenty-one feet long. Nematodes can be beneficial and harmful, insect and plant parasites are considered to be beneficial because they kill other harmful insects. In plant parasites they have a special structure called stylits. All plant parasites have stylits and are known for them but fungi and insect nematodes can have stylits. Soil does not always contain nematodes, but in the lab their purpose is to do soil assays. 

  The lab uses a Semi-Automatic Elutriator from North Carolina State to be able to separate nematodes from the soil and collect all the nematodes. In the Elutriator they use 500 sieve so the nematodes will not go through. It takes four minutes to run to collect the nematodes. Once collected are put in test tubes and ran for five minutes in the centrifuge that runs at 1800 RPM. They remove the solution and add a sugar solution and run again for one minute to separate nematodes from soil density. There are characteristics to extract nematodes from soil such as size, density, and mobility (gravity) when the nematodes are very active. 

      In the lab they use a Scanning Microscope, there are three on Virginia Tech campus. It scans the surface of the nematode. The nematode has to be dry before going in the microscope which can be done by air drying, freeze drying, or critical point drying that takes the solution that is a liquid to a gas without changing the states. When the microscope is running it clears other molecules from the beam to be able to go to the specimen and not to bounce off of the other molecules. We were able to observe Partitala Root Knot nematode, that come from pecan trees. It is derived from South Africa where the Partitala Root Knot nematodes is on every pecan tree. The stylit on the Partitala Root Knot was 16 microns long.

    The plants and knowing their disorders is only helpful to my career and studies at Ferrum by nutritional aspects for livestock. My career is focused on animals but having the knowledge of plants that can potentially cause problems in animals will help with my diagnosis of the problem. My family raises vegetables for our consumption and knowing the diseases and disorders that can affect them will help us to prevent it and eliminate it if possible. To be sustainable by Merriam-Webster dictionary "is a method of harvesting or using a resource so that the resource is not depleted or damaged." Virginia Tech is trying to maintain a resource and not deplete or damage plants that helps to not eliminate them or their resources so there effort are sustainable.