Improved axenic hydroponic whole plant propagation for rapid production of roots as transformation target tissue

Plant roots are used as an efficient target tissue for plant transformation assays. In root propagable species transformed roots are able to regenerate into whole plants without the addition of exogenous hormones, thus avoiding somaclonal variation associated with many plant transformation protocols. Plants grown in soil or soilless solid medium have roots that tend to be extremely delicate and are difficult to sterilize in advance of plant transformation experiments. Axenic tissue culture plants grown on semi-solid media are slow to produce large amounts of biomass compared to plants grown in solution-based media