News and Stories

The Plant Division at CREW is now using time-lapse photography to capture the growth of plants in vitro. Using a digital SLR camera, we program the camera to take a photograph of the plants every 30 minutes.

In general, it takes about two months before the test tube plants need to be subcultured onto fresh media. Now we can condense weeks of growth images into a 1-minute video. Watch the awned meadowbeauty (Rhexia aristosa), a flowering perennial from the Eastern United States,grow!

We initially observed the plants responding to the daily 16-hour light/8-hour dark cycle in the growth chamber. The leaves of the plants appear to “pulse” upward as the light automatically turns on each morning. The “sleep movements” of plants are well documented in terrestrial settings, but until now we had not observed them in plants grown in vitro at CREW. Time-lapse photography has also been a useful tool in comparing different types of media. We photograph a single species on different media to detect changes in growth patterns depending on the medium.

To date we have completed time-lapse videos of three species. The goal is to create a video for every species in the growth chamber. Since a single sequence can take up to six weeks to complete, we have our work cut out for us to create videos for the 35 to 50 species in the growth chamber!

(Reprinted from the Fall 2015 CREW Review)