Plant husbandry – Coated or impregnated seed – method or apparatus
Patent
1999-04-27
2000-12-26
Carone, Michael J.
Plant husbandry
Coated or impregnated seed, method or apparatus
A01H 400, A01C 106
Patent
active
061640123
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The present invention relates to a completely biodegradable hydrogel comprising polyester polyurethane polyurea as well as polysaccharides and/or their derivatives, and plant material capable of dividing.
The invention also relates to a process for embedding the biological material and for producing and shaping the hydrogels from aqueous solutions, as well as the use of the biological material embedded in hydrogels as artificial seed.
Plants are propagated sexually via seeds and asexually or vegetatively via meristems of the plants. Both types of propagation are of great economic importance. Whereas sowing of natural seeds is largely carried out mechanically, vegetative propagation involves much manual labour and is therefore more time-consuming, labour-intensive and accordingly more expensive than propagation by seeds.
Plant species, strains, cultivars and lines in which a specific genetic constitution is important (eg. clonal propagation of elite plants) are propagated vegetatively. Vegetative propagation is also used for plants that form seeds only after a long vegetation period, that form only a few seeds, or the germination capacity of whose seeds is damaged.
In order to simplify vegetative plant propagation, in addition to the development of automated processes for large-scale cultivation, suitable substances and processes for encapsulating the fragile material, which furthermore act as a seed case, are also desirable.
In the case of some types of plants it is now possible to produce miniaturised and regenerable plants (tissues) capable of dividing in large-scale cultivation processes (eg. WO95/19102, U.S. Pat. No. 5,294,549, U.S. Pat. No. 5,334,530). Without mechanical protection and/or protection against desiccation, these plant parts can be transported and stored only to a limited extent. It is therefore desirable to encapsulate or cover plant parts as discrete units so that they can be stored and/or transported, adequately dosed, and used just like natural plant seeds.
DE 2 103 873, EP 141 374, EP 107 141, U.S. Pat. No. 4,562,663, WO 8502972, U.S. Pat. No. 4,779,376, WO 9207457 describe the embedding of plant material in hydrogels which have been produced from ionically crosslinkable polysaccharides such as alginate, gelatins, carragheens or locust bean gum.
The aforementioned materials, combinations of materials and processes according to the prior art have not up to now been completely satisfactory since in some cases they neither impart a sufficient mechanical stability to the coated structures, nor do they protect the plant tissue against a too rapid or too extensive loss of water under conditions of use. This is true in particular of the aforementioned polysaccharide derivatives. During desiccation a marked shrinkage of the materials is also observed, which can seriously affect the protective function of the seed case. A further problem specifically involving the hitherto employed coatings based on polysaccharides such as alginic acids or their salts, or further ionic polysaccharide derivatives, is the insufficient degree of rehydration after a period of desiccation. These materials can therefore be preserved only under appropriate atmospheric humidity levels.
Subsequently applied coatings of fats, oils, waxes or water-insoluble polymers in order to retard dehydration and mechanical stabilisation, as are disclosed for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,562,663, WO 9217422, U.S. Pat. No. 5,190,797, are also unsuitable if they have to be processed under unphysiologically high temperatures, require the use of organic solvents, or if they adversely affect the oxygen supply of the enclosed biological material.
Besides hydrogels based on polysaccharides, polyurethane (PU) hydrogels have also been described. DE 3312578 and DE 4 217 891 describe the use of polyurethanes to immobilise cells capable of dividing. In this application PU hydrogels serve as carrier material of cells and biocatalysts in aqueous suspensions, although the PU hydrogels described for this purpose are not biodegradable.
The object of t
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Kalbe Jochen
Koch Rainhard
Lechelt-Kunze Christa
Muller Hanns-Peter
Simon Joachim
Bayer Aktiengesellschaft
Brown N. Denise
Carone Michael J.
Gellner Jeffrey L.
Gil Joseph C.
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