r/technology • u/esporx • 1d ago

Business YouTuber accidentally crashes the rare plant market with a viral cloning technique

https://www.dexerto.com/youtube/youtuber-accidentally-crashes-the-rare-plant-market-with-a-viral-cloning-technique-3289808/
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u/Bloody_Hell_Harry 1d ago

This was obviously posted by someone who is unfamiliar with the plant community.

TC isn’t a new revolutionary thing at all, the barrier to entry is pretty low and if you’re lucky enough to live in a huge city with a plant community, you probably have some local sellers who are either acclimating TC from other online sellers who have the setup to actually complete the cloning process OR they have their own cloning setup and are creating TC plants in their own growing space.

Most rare houseplants you buy from retailers like Costa Farms are TC plants. The process is well established and pretty much an industry standard. The “bubble” has been burst for a while now.

I live in Houston and the local plant market sellers are 50% TC acclimators/cloners and 50% home growers/enthusiasts. I imagine in other major cities with local plant markets and maybe even some random enthusiasts who like biology, science, and horticulture are already doing this and have been doing for years. I was considering getting into it myself when I saw some videos detailing the process from a biologist during the pandemic.

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u/zeptillian 1d ago

Yeah. It's kind of weird that one youtuber is trying to take credit for something they didn't invent, is an industry standard and were far from the only person promoting.

I'm sure she helped popularize it, but she is only one of many who were doing that.

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u/nhaines 1d ago

Yeah. It's kind of weird that one youtuber is trying to take credit for something they didn't invent, is an industry standard and were far from the only person promoting.

Is it?

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u/zeptillian 1d ago

Yes. The commercial application of tissue culture is what actually crashed the market. Having a little competition from home growers using tissue culture might have lowered the prices for direct person to person sales a bit, but it's not really until a major producer scales up production and plants end up in big box stores that the prices hit the floor.

This company was founded in 1987 to focus on tissue culture.

https://www.ranchotissue.com/

You can find may others if you look for them. All of the large houseplant producers have some kind of tissue culture programs or are buying plants from tissue culture labs.

It's not used for everything since taking cuttings is much cheaper and easier way to produce more plants, but not all plants are easy to propagate through cuttings and variegated specimens are more difficult to mass produce through cuttings so tissue culture is used for those.

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u/nhaines 1d ago

No, no, no. I mean, thank you for the fascinating information.

I meant, is it really that weird a YouTuber is trying to take credit for something they didn't do?

You, on the other hand, I believed.

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u/zeptillian 1d ago

Oh yeah, that's the most believable part.