So this idea/question popped up in my mind about synthetic seeds. For those rare species that we haven’t be able to produce seeds with, or the bulbs don’t produce offsets, or we only have one accession, (or we would like to get it to people in other countries), could this be a method to propagate clones from our plants and get them into the hands of other people? How hard is it to grow a synthetic seed into a plant once you receive the “seed”. Is a lot of [expensive?] equipment required? Does anyone know if it would be easier or more difficult or the same to get it into countries as actual seeds? (Like Australia or New Zealand or the EU for example?) One reason I wonder about this is that for example for the genus Musa (bananas), our USDA won’t allow import of actual corms—at all (as least from Southeast Asia). However, there is no problem whatsoever with importing tissue cultured Musa. If it isn’t too difficult, and especially if it isn’t as much trouble as tissue culturing itself, it might be a good way to share the harder-to-get species that some of us have that we haven’t been able to share with anyone else. --Lee Poulsen San Gabriel Valley, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a Latitude 34°N, Altitude 340 ft/100 m > On Jan 8, 2026, at 04:40, Tim Eck via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: > > Thanks for the info. > I did a quick search on synthetic seeds and it is much as you would > expect - encapsulating somatic embryos in alginates, etc. so they can > be treated more like seeds. > I also learned of a useful concoction used in plant propagation which > essentially kills every kingdom except plantae and is autoclavable and > reportedly is the best way to do plant tissue culture and preserve > seeds. I imagine a little of that would do wonders for the alginate > coating on synthetic seeds. > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…