Wild Macadamia Conservation

How to seed bank when you can’t bank seeds

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Macadamia jansenii shoots initiated into sterile culture by Dr Albert Wong at The University of Queensland. Photo Credits: Dr Albert Wong (recipient of Australian Flora Foundation Ian and Janet McConachie Macadamia Conservation Grant)
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Dr Albert Wong is working with a team at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation investigating the potential to grow macadamias through tissue culture. This WMC grant supports a project aiming to develop a tissue culture protocol for Macadamia jansenii, because so far, every individual macadamia tested requires a specific combination of growing media and conditions to survive and grow.

Like many rainforest species, Macadamia do not have seeds suitable for long-term seed banking due to their intolerance to the drying and freezing steps involved.  Tissue culture offers an alternative solution to maintaining and storing living germplasm of this rare species and will complement WMC’s other conservation actions for M. jansenii.

Macadamia jansenii shoots ready to initiate into sterile culture by Dr Albert Wong at The University of Queensland. Photo credit: Dr Albert Wong