Tissue culture concepts
Media recipes and additives
Media recipes in xPlant are documented formulations attached to your lab's culture work. They give every stage and transfer entry a permanent record of what the culture was growing on.
Why documented recipes matter
Reproducibility
When a culture responds well, you can look up exactly what media it was on and reproduce the conditions for the next batch.
Shared team knowledge
Recipes are visible to all team members. One person formulates a recipe; everyone can reference it without repeating the calculation.
Variant tracking
When you adjust a formulation for a specific species or season, save it as a named variant. The original stays intact for comparison.
Tracing outcomes to media
Attach a recipe to a stage or transfer entry so you can later filter cultures by the media they were grown on — useful for troubleshooting poor multiplication or contamination clusters.
Creating a recipe
Go to Dashboard → Media and click New Recipe. Build the formulation by selecting a base medium and adding additives one by one. Each additive line captures the compound name, concentration, and any notes.
| Field | What to enter |
|---|---|
| Name | Descriptive name — e.g. 'MS Half-Strength for Rooting' |
| Base medium | MS, WPM, B5, Knop, or custom base |
| pH | Target pH after autoclaving |
| Agar / gelling agent | Concentration and brand if relevant |
| Sucrose | Concentration in g/L |
| Additives | Each additive with concentration — PGRs, vitamins, charcoal, etc. |
| Preparation notes | Autoclave time, filter sterilisation steps, storage conditions |
| Tags | Optional: species, stage type, or use case tags |
Additive types
xPlant supports any additive type — no fixed list. The categories below are common in tissue culture work and useful for organising your recipe library with tags.
| Category | Examples | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plant growth regulators | BAP, IBA, IAA, NAA, 2iP, TDZ, kinetin | Recorded in mg/L or µM with supplier and lot if relevant |
| Vitamins and amino acids | Thiamine (B1), nicotinic acid, glycine, myo-inositol | Often part of a macro/micro vitamin mix |
| Carbon sources | Sucrose, glucose, fructose | Concentration in g/L |
| Gelling agents | Agar, Phytagel, Gelrite, agarose | Concentration as a percentage or g/L |
| Supplements | Activated charcoal, casein hydrolysate, coconut water | Include concentration and intended effect |
Attaching a recipe to a stage or transfer
When you add a stage or record a transfer, there's an optional Media Recipe field. Start typing the recipe name to search your library and select it. Once attached, the recipe is linked in the stage history and visible in the transfer detail — so anyone reviewing the record knows exactly what media that culture was on.
Recipes are not version-locked to the stage entry. If you need to record a formulation change for the same base recipe, create a new named variant rather than editing the existing recipe — so that older stage records still point to the correct historical formulation.