Trichoderma Harzianum & Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizas

[oldtimer1]

Cheers Felix!

If the spores aren't viable will they do any harm? Is it worth sticking them in 'just in case', safe in the kownledge that they're harmless?

It will do no harm.

[dingo bingo]

Thank you for the reassurance OT!

[gwickmilloer]

Now that I have read all the posts.....use fox farm nuts and happy frong soil. it would have saved some of you alot of worry.

[uBercaMeL]

Another interesting study on Trichoderma species, findings include certain harzanium species increasing root mass and exploration and plant height, germination speed and ratios, and increased chlorophyll concentration in leaves. Oddly though, they claim to have found no relationship between plant growth and the percentage of roots colonized by trichoderma spp.

Edited November 12, 2012 by distracted

[gwickmilloer]

using as a rooting additive... can't hurt right?

[uBercaMeL]

Just for interest's sake, got access to a lab recently so thought I'd try saving a bunch of money by culturing my own trichoderma harzianum t-22:

Broke a TNC gelcap open, added sterile water and mixed on a vibrating mixer thingy:

2 types of potato-dextrose-agar, 1 with antibiotics 1 without:

Syringed in the spores:

Spread about with spreader thingy:

Sealed up ready to take home and sit on a heat matt next to my cannabis cuttings & germing chilli and tomato seeds:

I'll update in a few weeks when it's obvious if it worked or not... Feliz when you tried it how long did it take for the culture to sporulate/go green?

[Cambium]

Shouldn't be longer than a day or two to see it start running if your temps are good. Looks like some clean tec there mate, is that nocced in front of a HEPA hood? Why the vibrating pad, are you going to do a live culture, can you even with Trich sp?

[uBercaMeL]

Cheers, hope so dude, the friend who helped me (and did most of the work) has been working in a lab for a while.

The vibrating pad was just to get the contents of the gelcaps to break down in the water.

The whole exercise was mainly for fun, but as I said it would be nice to turn that £1's worth of spores into a load more.

Any suggestions on collecting the spores camb/anyone? Or would it be better to just mix in the contents of any seemingly succesful cultures with the medium (coco) straight away and use? I'm sure I've read trichoderma can be cultured live, and from all the mushroom farmers horror stories of it taking over and killing their crops you'd think it was infective enough.

ps - yeh was done under an extraction hood.. Probably futile as the packet the caps came in were unlikely sterile themselves.

Edited February 24, 2013 by uBercaMeL

[uBercaMeL]

Could I just refrigerate the dishes when they are full camb, until they are ready for use like? From a few abstracts it looks like researchers do that for fairly extended periods. Or would I need to collect the spores separately for any decent shelf-life? Turn the covered dishes upside then tap, then dry? Cheers.

[Cambium]

I think both would be fine. Any plate work or spawn runs I've done have involved composting trich as soon as I see it I think that you will have to have a good look (under a scope if you can), at what has germinated on the plate. I dunno under what conditions the spores you used were collected, unless it was sterile, it's likely that you will have some other gubbins that you might want isolate away from to get a clean plate before you try and store for use. You will also have lots of trich vars, many different combinations of + - spores, so try to learn how to recognise when you have dikaryotic mycelium, it will have formed clamp connections and will compartmentalise on the plate. Find the fastest/strongest and expand that as your spore source.

Edited February 25, 2013 by Cambium

[uBercaMeL]

Awesome, thanks dude. Some more reading is needed for sure. The strain used was TNC's t-22 harzianum but as you say it was unlikely the only thing in the packet..

[Cambium]

Just to say that once you have isolated out a strain, it might be better to use it like a sour dough yeast. I dunno, like a little pot of compost that you add sawdust to. Keep it alive and topped up and use it as and when you need it rather than a load of sterile plate work every time. Just a random.

[uBercaMeL]

Petris after 1 week.

Around half have a bright green coating of spores (trichoderma, hopefully?) and the other half are mostly pale cream (either not trichoderma or just not sporulated yet?)

Just wondering what to do next really, could either refrigate them and use when needed, add a few to the big tub of coco I'm about to use (or just upend and shake?), or add coco to a petri and see if it grows into it?

[Felix Dzerzhinsky]

Interesting experiment uBercaMeL, will be following how you get on. I never did get around to harvesting mine when I had a go myself

[uBercaMeL]

Yo Felix. Yeah, problem is proving it's actually trichoderma and not penicillium. I might see if I can get access to the lab again and use their microscopes and see if I can narrow it down.

Here's a few more pics of one of the possibly successful plates:

All the green dishes except one look very much the same, so either they were all contaminated (quite possible as the lab apparently has lots of penicillium molds) or a good few worked as planned...

Edited March 7, 2013 by uBercaMeL