Albert Wong

Tissue culture in the Tool-Kit to conserve Australia’s rarest Macadamia

Tissue culture (TC) for conservation has been used on a range of Australian native plants. This project aims to develop a TC protocol for Australia’s rarest macadamia, Macadamia jansenii, which is difficult to propagate and cannot be conserved via seed banking. The expected outcome is a platform technology for efficient, climate-safe, disease-free propagation of M. jansenii and future development of cryobanking methods. This will complement existing conservation efforts, allow long-term germplasm preservation de-risked from environmental uncertainties, and provide a means for future reintroduction efforts.

Basal media optimisation for initial nodal culture establishment will form the bulk of this project. Alternative and scalable regeneration routes such as somatic embryogenesis and organogenesis from various explants will also be explored. Promising regeneration routes will be explored and transferred to selected commercial cultivars to form the foundational platform for future gene-editing works.