Switchgrass progress

We have a good supply of young switchgrass now for our projects if I can get them to live over spring break with no attention. Right before we left school on Friday, I raised the lights as high as they will go above the plants to keep from burning them up, the kids watered them, and then we filled the trays they are sitting in up with at least 1 to 1.5 inches of water. I'd say that will either keep them alive or drown them, no real way to know which. But I felt there was no way to keep them alive with no water for 10 days, so I'm hoping watering them from the bottom will be enough.

Two of our pathogens look great. I had the kids who are going to be my lab techs next semester make clean cultures of the pathogens I had started on PDA. With no rifampicin or lactic acid, getting cultures that aren't contaminated with bacteria has been a challenge. I've got to have one or the other to do this project with students. Sarah is supposed to be ordering me some lactic acid after break, so maybe that will work. I have also autoclaved some inoculating loops to use only with the switchgrass project to help reduce contamination.

However we may not need my pathogens. The plants we are growing are showing signs of disease as well. When we get back, I need to have the kids start some new plants from seed and I need to let them surface sterilize the plant tissue we have and plate them on water agar to see what grows out of them. We may do that on the first day back in lab.