Research and Development at Rahan Meristem
Rahan Meristem is an agro-biotech company with over 40 years’ experience in plant propagation and improvement. The Company’s R&D Department is among the leading biotechnology lab both in Israel and worldwide.
The R&D expertise covering wide range of skills including: genetics and breeding of fruit trees, viral elimination by tissue cultures, vegetable breeding via haploid cultures, tissue culture-based propagation, cell cultures, mutations induction in tissue cultures, genetic engineering, and genome editing (CRISPR).
The extensive knowledge and experience in these fields, positions the company as a world leader in solving agricultural problems using tissue culture- and cell-culture-based methods. Tremendous skills and specialized tools were developed for the propagation of crops that are not propagated by seeds.
We routinely develop protocols for culture-based plant propagation.
Plants that are propagated via tissue cultures have many advantages:
- Fast propagation and large quantities of plants while maintaining their genetics.
- Plants that are grown in cultures are free of fungus, bacteria and pests.
- Plants from tissue culture show increased vigor & growth in the field.
- Maintenance of plant genetic bank in a small area.
Protocols developed in recent years
Avocado rootstocks propagation via tissue culture
Blueberries propagation via tissue culture
Kiwi propagation via tissue culture
Breeding and improvement of plant varieties
The R&D Department has extensive experience in breeding and improving variety of crops.
We can affect a large number of plant traits:
- yield components (quantity, time to harvest)
- Fruit quality (size, shape, metabolism, etc.)
- stress resistance (disease, deficiencies, saltiness, etc.)
- Plant architecture (height, bunch shape, etc.)
Our breeding and improvement methods are based on cell and tissue cultures, and include:
- Random mutations
- Induced mutations
- Somaclonal variations
- Genetic engineering
- Genome editing (CRISPR)
Our new Banana variety:
Adi – a dwarf-like stature with high fruit yield
Varieties in development:
Resistant Banana to Fusarium (TR4)
Screening for resistant lines at Wageningen University (Netherlands) by TR4 infections
A lines that following the fungal infection showed the TR4 symptoms
B lines that following the fungal infection were asymptomatic.
The asymptomatic lines (B) from the greenhouse trials were transferred to a field trial in a heavily infected soils by TR4 in the Philippines.
The first yield of the asymptomatic lines in the field trial. To date, almost 95% of the banana plants did not show symptoms of contamination with TR4.
Plant viral elimination:
Rahan Meristem’s array of services include routine elimination of plants viruses using tissue culture-based methods. The virus elimination process is done by thermotherapy – the standard method for plants virus elimination in tissue cultures, and chemotherapy – the alternative method for eradicating plant viruses in tissue culture. For every crop, the we have developed a unique growing media according to the various propagation stages.
Sweet potatoes
We routinely clean sweet potatoes from a range of viruses. We retain a bank of clean plants in tissue culture for the various breeders and every year supply virus-free plants to the various breeders.
Grapevines
We routinely eliminate a range of grapevines viruses. Both varieties and rootstock can be cleaned.
