Getting started
The tissue culture spreadsheet
The columns a tissue culture spreadsheet needs, why the transfer log is the one sheet that matters, and the four points where a spreadsheet stops being the right tool for a lab.
Start with one sheet, not five
Almost every tissue culture lab starts on a spreadsheet, and for a single technician with a few lines it is the right tool: it costs nothing, it is on every machine, and it can be reshaped the day the work changes. The labs that get the most out of a spreadsheet are the ones that keep it to a single transfer log rather than a workbook per crop.
A transfer log has one row per transfer, not one row per plant and not one sheet per line. Everything a lab later wants to know — what came from what, how much was lost and where, which medium a jar was poured from — can be derived from that one table if the row carries enough. Split it across sheets and the arithmetic stops closing, because nothing forces two sheets to agree.
The columns that earn their place
These are the fields a lab keeps reaching for. Copy them into a sheet of your own; nothing here is specific to any product.
| Column | Why it earns its place |
|---|---|
| Date | The day the work happened, not the day it was typed. A log written up on Friday for the whole week loses the ordering that explains a contamination. |
| Lot or line code | Whatever the bench writes on the label. If the sheet and the label disagree, the sheet is the one that is wrong. |
| Crop and cultivar | One column each. A single "variety" column stops you counting by crop later. |
| Stage | Initiation, multiplication, rooting, acclimatisation — your own names, used consistently. Consistency matters more than which words. |
| Vessels in / vessels out | Two columns, not one. A single "count" cannot tell a split from a loss. |
| Plants per vessel | Held per stage. A tub at multiplication and a tub at rooting do not hold the same number, and one figure for both makes every derived plant count wrong. |
| Medium | The recipe and its version. "MS + 1.0 BAP" is not enough a year later when the recipe has moved on. |
| Discarded, and why | The single most valuable column and the first one dropped. Without a reason the number is a mystery; with one it is a pattern. |
| Who | Initials are enough. Not for blame — for asking the person who was there. |
Where a spreadsheet stops being the right tool
A spreadsheet does not fail loudly. It keeps opening, and the answers it gives quietly stop being true. These are the four points where labs tend to notice, and none of them is about the size of the file.
- Two people edit it at once. The moment a second technician needs the sheet while the first has it open, you are choosing between waiting and keeping copies — and copies is how a lab ends up with two numbers for the same week.
- You need to know what a jar was, not what it is. A sheet holds the current state well and history badly; answering "what was this line eight subcultures ago" means reading backwards through rows and hoping nobody overwrote a cell.
- The tub balance stops closing. When produced, controlled and discarded no longer reconcile, the sheet cannot tell you whether the loss happened or the typing did.
- Somebody outside the lab asks for the record. An inspector, an auditor or a customer asks a question in their vocabulary, and the answer has to be assembled by hand from a layout that was designed for the bench.
A spreadsheet is not the wrong answer: If one person does the transfers, the lab runs a handful of lines, and nobody outside asks for the record, a single well-kept transfer log is genuinely the right tool and costs you nothing. The four points above are the honest boundary, not an argument that every lab has crossed it.
Questions labs ask
Is there a template I can download?
The column table above is the template — copy it into a sheet and delete what your lab does not use. There is deliberately no file to download: a spreadsheet you have shaped around your own stages and crops is worth more than one shaped around somebody else's, and a downloaded file goes stale the moment your process moves.
Is a spreadsheet a tissue culture database?
Not quite, and the difference is the one that bites. A database keeps each fact once and relates it — a jar belongs to a lot, a lot came from a mother, a medium has a version — so asking a new question is a query rather than a rebuild. A spreadsheet keeps a grid, and every relationship in it lives in a person's head or in a formula somebody else is afraid to touch. A sheet is the right tool for a while; it is not a tissue culture database, and the moment you want to ask it something it was not laid out for, you find out.
What actually breaks first when a lab grows?
Concurrent editing, almost always. The history problem is worse but takes longer to hurt; two people needing the sheet on the same morning happens the week you hire the second technician.
Can I move an existing spreadsheet into xPlant Pro?
Yes. The import reads a transfer log in roughly the shape above, and the free plan is enough to try it with one crop before deciding anything. If the columns do not line up, the import tells you which ones rather than guessing.
Do I have to stop using spreadsheets entirely?
No, and most labs do not. Sheets remain good at one-off analysis and at sharing a number with somebody who does not need an account. What changes is where the record lives — the sheet becomes something you export, not the only copy.
Keep the log the bench already writes
Bring the sheet you have. The free plan takes one crop, one line and the columns above, so you can see the same week in both before you decide.