- Synthetic seeds can be created to grow plants like Monsteras, begonias, and philodendrons.
- Part 1 of the video shows how to make synthetic seeds in a laboratory.
- Part 2 replicates the process of making synthetic seeds at home.
- The process involves measuring water, adding MS media and sugar, calibrating the pH, heating the media, and adding sodium alginate.
- The sodium alginate is added slowly to avoid clumps and dissolved over time.
- Solution B is made separately by adding calcium chloride to water.
- The plants used for the synthetic seeds are prepared by cutting nodal sections and placing them on the sodium alginate solution.
- A micro pipette is used to transfer the seeds into the calcium chloride for hardening.
- The seeds are left in the calcium chloride for around 10 minutes before being rinsed and stored in a sterile centrifuge tube.
- Synthetic seeds have a low germination rate and are not a reliable method for growing plants.

- The speaker recommends Plant Cell Technologies products for those interested in trying tissue culture for the first time.
- They provide a discount code for 10% off orders from Plant Cell Technologies.
- The speaker mentions a YouTube channel by Francisco from Plant Cell Technologies that provides videos on tissue culture.
- The speaker thanks Francisco for teaching them how to make synthetic seeds.
- The speaker plans to take NyQuil and go back to sleep.

Please enjoy this synthetic seeds (aka biological boba) tutorial with a side helping of covid. This tutorial is definitely more intermediate-level but I have some beginner still air box videos coming out very soon so make sure to subscribe! To clear up some confusion in the comments: this is not a replacement for real seeds! This is a method to preserve plant genetics in a small space.

Check out the video that Francisco and I filmed on Plant Cell Technology's channel!: https://youtu.be/2ntnWKB857c

Etsy Store: https://etsy.me/3qBOHEJ
Instagram: https://bit.ly/3OGoPPK

Want to try tissue culture at home? Use code PLANTSINJARS for 10% off your Plant Cell Technology order: https://www.plantcelltechnology.com/?ref=PLANTSINJARS

Supplies to Make Synthetic Seeds:
 • Murashige & Skoog: https://bit.ly/3pMpAOr
 • Sodium Alginate: https://amzn.to/3rB42pA
 • Calcium Chloride: https://amzn.to/3Q1aMX8
 • Micro-pipette: https://amzn.to/3Q4gkAf
 • Pipette tips: https://amzn.to/3rAaPQh

Timestamps:
0:35 Preparing Solution A & B
3:29 Isolating the node
7:32 Making Seeds at Home

Please note that some of the links in the description are affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, I may receive a commission. This commission comes at no additional cost to you.

Monsteras, begonias, and even philodendrons can be grown from artificially created synthetic seeds.

Synthetic seeds are not seeds in the biological sense, they are artificially created capsules that encapsulate a plant embryo.

In part 1, a very special guest is going to show me how to make synthetic seeds in the laboratory.

And in part 2, I'll replicate the process of making synthetic seeds at home.

Timestamps will be in the description below in case you don't want to watch the whole video or you want to come back and re-watch a certain part.

So the first thing we need is to measure the water.

So I just want to measure 100 milliliters of water.

Now we're going to add the sugar, 1.5 grams of sugar.

Do you have problems with the plants, like with the embryos starting to grow while they're encapsulated in the seeds before you're ready to plant them?

Yeah, so you don't fully encapsulate the embryo.

It can kind of sprout inside of the tubes.

Now we have to add the sodium alginate, but before we do that we need to calibrate the pH.

The pH right now is too acidic I need to increase the pH so I just want to calibrate the pH I just want to add 1 drop at a time until I reach my 5.6 to 5.8 so now that we have calibrated the pH we are ready to heat the media so to add the sodium alginate so you want to turn on your heat plate.

The media is almost at boiling point, so you can see it's getting steam right now.

So it is time to start adding the sodium alginate.

I'm with you at 2%, so because we have 100 milliliters, we need 2 grams.

When adding the sodium alginate you want to do this very slowly.

If you do it too fast it's going to make a lot of clumps.

So like just like this Very slow and you can see that it's making some clumps.

You can grab like a spoon or like a glass rod kind of to help it out to break it up.

Can take a while, so you can put this in the microwave just kind of to get it to boil faster and then you just put it back in the heat plate and then just kind of try to break all of these clumps.

How long does it usually take for it to fully dissolve?

So we want to make our solution B, which is very simple.

Next we're going to measure our calcium chloride.

So if we have 100 milliliters, we're going to do like half a gram.

Literally just kind of 1 little spoon, 0.5 of a gram.

And then I just want to place it in my other jar.

And then just kind of give it a quick shake, and this is ready to go.

Autoclave both solutions at 15 PSI for 20 minutes.

All right, So these are the plants that we're going to be working on.

These are some, use some philodendron, white night.

I want to use my, the microscope, because I want to be doing like a really small work.

But if you have a really good vision, not like me, I have terrible vision, you can do this, which are the use of the microscope.

So what I want to do is I want to put my blades.

So be very careful when using like the blades because they can really cut you up.

So this comes sterile out of the package.

But I want to place it in my Glad Vita sterilizer.

I want to grab my, some little clump of plants.

So this is plants that have been growing in Tisza culture.

Be as gentle as possible and trying to split the plant.

So I want to kind of do this into like smaller clumps first.

You don't have to put a lot of pressure or you're going to start damaging the plant.

So like this is a good example right here.

What part of like 1 of the little plants are you trying to isolate here for the seed?

You just need the node and it'll be fine.

Just for the santeria seed, I like to kind of remove all the leaves, but you don't have to.

This has been sterilized in the pressure cooker or the autoclave.

Also I have sterilized a couple of portion cups and use a pour, use a little bit of the sodium alginate on it and I just want to grab the plants I already cut, place it on top of the sodium alginate.

You don't have to stick it all the way in, they can use a rest on the on the top.

All right so we are ready to start making our centennial seeds.

What I like to use is a use a micropipette, your regular micropipette.

Now what happened is that the hole for the micro pipette is too small so what I'm going to do is going to grab my sterile scalpel and then I just want to cut the end of it if I can.

So what you can do right now is you want to put the lid on.

You can put this on, sometimes some people like to put this on like a shaker, so make sure it's shaking so they don't kind of stick together.

And we just have to wait like around 10, 15 minutes, and then you get your seed.

We are ready to take out the scented seeds.

So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to carefully open the lid, and I'm going to use my sterile spoon.

So you can see now these are made of tail so I say like you maybe want to put it in a shaker or shake it as you're dropping it in so you avoid this, but that's okay.

So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to place this inside of just sterile water.

This is just kind of to rinse the calcium chloride.

So this is my seed right here, and I just want to drop it in the sterile water.

After that, I just want to grab a sterile tube, and this is used for storage, so I just want to drop it in my sterile tube.

This is ready to go, if I can grab the last seat.

I can just place this in the fridge for up to a year.

If I don't need them in a year, I just want to make a new batch.

♪♪ Following Francisco's directions in part 1, I made the sodium alginate solution.

I also decided to try to film this process without a hot plate just to make sure it was possible in case someone didn't have 1.

And yes, it is possible, but you just have to stir like an absolute mad woman for like 15 minutes straight.

I also made the calcium chloride solution and I autoclaved full solutions for 20 minutes at 15 psi.

I have some cane begonias growing that are about the right size to use for synthetic seeds.

Similarly to philodendrons, which we used in the lab demonstration, cane begonias also have nodes.

As I cut the nodes, I'm just gonna put them in a small container of distilled water to make sure that they won't dry out.

You can see that I'm not using a microscope for this process and that is because I don't have a microscope.

I've been playing around with the idea of maybe making a patreon to produce some extra content for people but also maybe to fund buying things like a microscope which I think would be really fun for the channel.

I did originally want to film this part of the process in a still air box and I do plan to make some upcoming videos with the still air box so if you're new to tissue culture make sure that you're subscribed so you see those when they come out because they're gonna be really helpful to you.

Once I had enough nodal sections, I gently placed each 1 on top of the sodium alginate solution that contains the MS and vitamins.

And then I used a micro pipette to transfer each seed into the calcium chloride so that they can harden up.

I found the pipette easier to control than a spoon, although I did try both methods at home.

I left mine in the calcium chloride solution for around 10 minutes before I took them out and rinsed them in distilled water and ultimately put them into a sterile centrifuge tube.

I'm kind of obsessed with the synthetic seeds.

Unfortunately, Francisco told me they only have about a 20% germination rate so it's not really a reliable way to grow plants by seed and it would actually probably be faster or actually definitely be faster to just take the plants from tissue culture and grow them in soil or fluval stratum once they're large enough.

I did end up planting mine in some fluval stratum and perlite that I had left over from my acclimation video so definitely make sure to follow me along on my Instagram where I'll be making updates about the seeds and whether or not I can get them to germinate.

Everything that I used for this entire video will be linked below.

If you want to try Tissue Culture for the first time, I highly recommend Plant Cell Technologies products.

That's where I get all of my tissue culture products and I have a code with them, plants in jars, all in caps for 10% off your order.

I'll also have Plant Cell Technologies' YouTube channel linked below where Francisco makes videos on tissue culture.

Thank you, Francisco, for teaching me how to make synthetic seeds, you rock.

I'm gonna go pop a NyQuil and go back to sleep.


Speaker 0: Monsteras, begonias, and even philodendrons can be grown from artificially created synthetic seeds. Synthetic seeds are not seeds in the biological sense, they are artificially created capsules that encapsulate a plant embryo. In part 1, a very special guest is going to show me how to make synthetic seeds in the laboratory. Oh my god, I sound like a chain smoker. I'm sick.

And in part 2, I'll replicate the process of making synthetic seeds at home. Timestamps will be in the description below in case you don't want to watch the whole video or you want to come back and re-watch a certain part. Let's get into it. Hello everyone.

Speaker 1: So the first thing we need is to measure the water. So I just want to measure 100 milliliters of water. So I just want to freehand it. Oh, that's pretty good. Let's add our water to our jars.

Turn off the magnetic stirrer. Now we're going to add our MS media. 0.22 grams of MS media. Now we're going to add the sugar, 1.5 grams of sugar.

Speaker 0: Do you have problems with the plants, like with the embryos starting to grow while they're encapsulated in the seeds before you're ready to plant them?

Speaker 1: Yeah, so you don't fully encapsulate the embryo. It can kind of sprout inside of the tubes. Now we have to add the sodium alginate, but before we do that we need to calibrate the pH. 5.6 to 5.8. The pH right now is too acidic I need to increase the pH so I just want to calibrate the pH I just want to add 1 drop at a time until I reach my 5.6 to 5.8 so now that we have calibrated the pH we are ready to heat the media so to add the sodium alginate so you want to turn on your heat plate.

The media is almost at boiling point, so you can see it's getting steam right now. So it is time to start adding the sodium alginate. I'm with you at 2%, so because we have 100 milliliters, we need 2 grams. When adding the sodium alginate you want to do this very slowly. If you do it too fast it's going to make a lot of clumps.

So like just like this Very slow and you can see that it's making some clumps. As it boils, it's going to dissolve it. Yeah, perfect. You can grab like a spoon or like a glass rod kind of to help it out to break it up. Thank you.

Can take a while, so you can put this in the microwave just kind of to get it to boil faster and then you just put it back in the heat plate and then just kind of try to break all of these clumps.

Speaker 0: How long does it usually take for it to fully dissolve?

Speaker 1: It can take like a good 10, 15 minutes. Okay. So we want to make our solution B, which is very simple. And we want to grab our other jar. We want to add 100 milliliters.

Next we're going to measure our calcium chloride. So we do like 0.5% of like solution. So if we have 100 milliliters, we're going to do like half a gram. Okay. Literally just kind of 1 little spoon, 0.5 of a gram.

And then I just want to place it in my other jar. And then just kind of give it a quick shake, and this is ready to go.

Speaker 0: Autoclave both solutions at 15 PSI for 20 minutes.

Speaker 1: All right, So these are the plants that we're going to be working on. These are some, use some philodendron, white night. I want to use my, the microscope, because I want to be doing like a really small work. But if you have a really good vision, not like me, I have terrible vision, you can do this, which are the use of the microscope. So what I want to do is I want to put my blades.

So these are sterile blades. So be very careful when using like the blades because they can really cut you up. So this comes sterile out of the package. But I want to place it in my Glad Vita sterilizer. Spray my hands.

I want to grab my, some little clump of plants. So this is plants that have been growing in Tisza culture. Be as gentle as possible and trying to split the plant. So I want to kind of do this into like smaller clumps first. You need to let the blade do the job.

You don't have to put a lot of pressure or you're going to start damaging the plant. So like this is a good example right here. If I had coffee, I cannot do this. I mean, check over here. Can you see this?

This is like, look at that.

Speaker 0: Very small.

Speaker 1: Very small.

Speaker 0: What part of like 1 of the little plants are you trying to isolate here for the seed?

Speaker 1: I need the nodes. You just need the node and it'll be fine. Just for the santeria seed, I like to kind of remove all the leaves, but you don't have to. This is sodium alginate. This has been sterilized in the pressure cooker or the autoclave.

Also I have sterilized a couple of portion cups and use a pour, use a little bit of the sodium alginate on it and I just want to grab the plants I already cut, place it on top of the sodium alginate. You don't have to stick it all the way in, they can use a rest on the on the top. All right so we are ready to start making our centennial seeds. What I like to use is a use a micropipette, your regular micropipette. You need your sterile micropipette tips.

Now what happened is that the hole for the micro pipette is too small so what I'm going to do is going to grab my sterile scalpel and then I just want to cut the end of it if I can. Oh these are harder than I thought. There we go. And just let it do up. There we go.

Nice. So that's my centelic seat. So let me show you the spoon method. There you go, so that was 1 big 1. So what you can do right now is you want to put the lid on.

You can put this on, sometimes some people like to put this on like a shaker, so make sure it's shaking so they don't kind of stick together. But I really don't don't get a problem. So just give it a little shake. And we just have to wait like around 10, 15 minutes, and then you get your seed. We are ready to take out the scented seeds.

So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to carefully open the lid, and I'm going to use my sterile spoon. I just want to try to fish them out. There we go. So you can see now these are made of tail so I say like you maybe want to put it in a shaker or shake it as you're dropping it in so you avoid this, but that's okay. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to place this inside of just sterile water.

This is just kind of to rinse the calcium chloride. This is a much better example. So this is my seed right here, and I just want to drop it in the sterile water. After that, I just want to grab a sterile tube, and this is used for storage, so I just want to drop it in my sterile tube. And this is pretty much done.

This is ready to go, if I can grab the last seat. I can just place this in the fridge for up to a year. If I don't need them in a year, I just want to make a new batch.

Speaker 0: ♪♪ Following Francisco's directions in part 1, I made the sodium alginate solution.

Speaker 1: Alginate?

Speaker 0: I also decided to try to film this process without a hot plate just to make sure it was possible in case someone didn't have 1. And yes, it is possible, but you just have to stir like an absolute mad woman for like 15 minutes straight. You have to channel a hot plate. Be the hot plate. You are the hot plate.

I also made the calcium chloride solution and I autoclaved full solutions for 20 minutes at 15 psi. I have some cane begonias growing that are about the right size to use for synthetic seeds. Similarly to philodendrons, which we used in the lab demonstration, cane begonias also have nodes. As I cut the nodes, I'm just gonna put them in a small container of distilled water to make sure that they won't dry out. You can see that I'm not using a microscope for this process and that is because I don't have a microscope.

I've been playing around with the idea of maybe making a patreon to produce some extra content for people but also maybe to fund buying things like a microscope which I think would be really fun for the channel. I did originally want to film this part of the process in a still air box and I do plan to make some upcoming videos with the still air box so if you're new to tissue culture make sure that you're subscribed so you see those when they come out because they're gonna be really helpful to you. Once I had enough nodal sections, I gently placed each 1 on top of the sodium alginate solution that contains the MS and vitamins. And then I used a micro pipette to transfer each seed into the calcium chloride so that they can harden up. I found the pipette easier to control than a spoon, although I did try both methods at home.

I left mine in the calcium chloride solution for around 10 minutes before I took them out and rinsed them in distilled water and ultimately put them into a sterile centrifuge tube. And these guys look really cool. I'm kind of obsessed with the synthetic seeds. Unfortunately, Francisco told me they only have about a 20% germination rate so it's not really a reliable way to grow plants by seed and it would actually probably be faster or actually definitely be faster to just take the plants from tissue culture and grow them in soil or fluval stratum once they're large enough. I did end up planting mine in some fluval stratum and perlite that I had left over from my acclimation video so definitely make sure to follow me along on my Instagram where I'll be making updates about the seeds and whether or not I can get them to germinate.

Everything that I used for this entire video will be linked below. If you want to try Tissue Culture for the first time, I highly recommend Plant Cell Technologies products. That's where I get all of my tissue culture products and I have a code with them, plants in jars, all in caps for 10% off your order. I'll also have Plant Cell Technologies' YouTube channel linked below where Francisco makes videos on tissue culture. Thank you, Francisco, for teaching me how to make synthetic seeds, you rock.

Okay, I think that's everything. I'm gonna go pop a NyQuil and go back to sleep.

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How to Grow ANY Plant from Seed