ADVANCING TISSUE CULTURE IN TREE SPECIES FOR USE IN CLIMATE ADAPTATION, BREEDING, PRODUCTION OF CULTURED TREE PRODUCTS

FORAY bioscience is developing plant cell culture processes to produce tree products without need to harvest or process whole trees. FORAY is building the scientific tools required to make cell culture possible across plant species and to increase the pace of research across the industry.Goal: FORAY aims to develop a first ever database compiling species characteristics, culture information, and inter-species relationships.Objective 1a: Create database entries for at least 150 species spanning angiosperms and gymnosperms.Objective 1b: Create and implement a database structure that relates database entries according to phylogenetic positions.Goal: FORAY aims to characterize culture trends across species to show that culture behavior and requirements exhibit predictable patterns.Objective 2a: Analyze culture trends across database and show that as degree of relatedness between species decreases, differences in culture requirements become statistically significant (P<0.05).Objective 2b: Through analysis of compiled database information, identify a taxon for initial validation work which includes species with varied degrees of established culture knowledge (encompassing species with 0 records of culture establishment to >4 records of culture establishment).Objective 3: Create report synthesizing findings of trend analysis.Goal: FORAY aims to validate trends in culture behavior empirically and to demonstrate potential for prediction models to improve culture outcomes in poorly studied species.Objective 4: Informed by database, establish viable cell cultures for two closely related tree species (live cell fraction >30%).Objective 5: Identify culture protocols corresponding to highest culture initiation rate for species 1 and 2 (culture initiation >0%, initiation rate is equal to or higher than other media formulation P<0.05).Objective 6: Apply protocols to two increasingly distant relatives to attempt culture establishment and measure success rate. Show that callus initiation of distant relatives (species 3 and 4) using recipes developed for species 1 and 2 are not as successful as callus initiation in species 1 and 2 (P<0.05 % callus initiated). Using database-driven culture requirement predictions for species 3 and 4 (vs 1 and 2) indicate a probable cause.Objective 7: Perform qualitative and quantitative characterization of growth for successfully established cultures and add the species to in-house library.