Tissue Culture & Plantlets per Subculture Cycle
Multiplies banana
Enter starting cultures, multiplication rate, subculture cycles and survival to get the gross cultures, net field-ready plants and fold increase — so you can plan banana, potato, orchid or sugarcane micropropagation.
Plan your micropropagation
Next: budget media and labour for 8,100 gross cultures, then expect ~6,480 field-ready plants after hardening losses (80% survival).
Multiplication rates fall over many cycles (somaclonal variation, vitrification); most labs cap sub-culture cycles per explant to keep plants true-to-type.
Tissue culture — key facts
- Gross cultures
- start × rate ^ cycles
- Growth
- exponential per subculture
- Net plants
- gross × survival rate
- Fold increase
- rate ^ cycles
- Multiplication rate
- ≈ 3–5 per cycle
- Losses
- rooting, hardening, transport
- Common crops
- banana, potato, orchids, sugarcane
- Privacy
- Runs in your browser; nothing uploaded
A few cultures today, a field of plants in a season
Micropropagation is multiplication by compounding: each subculture cycle divides every culture into several new plantlets, so a handful of starting cultures becomes thousands after a few rounds — gross cultures equal the start times the rate raised to the number of cycles. That exponential growth is why labs can produce clean, uniform, disease-free banana, potato, orchid and sugarcane plants at scale. But the lab number is not the field number: rooting and hardening losses thin the count before planting.
This tool gives the gross cultures, net field-ready plants, fold increase and cycle count from your starting cultures, multiplication rate, cycles and survival rate, so you can plan production to hit a target. Use it to size a batch, compare protocols and decide how many cycles to run before quality drifts. Pair it with the Banana Sucker, Grafting Success and Polybag Nursery calculators for full planting-material planning.
Plan to a target
Size cultures and cycles to hit a plant goal.
Count real plants
Net field-ready plants after hardening losses.
See the multiplying power
Fold increase shows the protocol's reach.
Choose cycle count
Run just enough cycles before quality drifts.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is tissue culture multiplication?+
Tissue culture (micropropagation) grows many genetically identical plantlets from a few starting cultures in a lab. At each subculture cycle every culture is divided and produces several new shoots — the multiplication rate — so the number of plantlets grows exponentially over successive cycles. This calculator projects how many plants that yields and how many survive to the field.
How is the number of plantlets calculated?+
Gross cultures = starting cultures × (multiplication rate ^ number of cycles). For example, 10 starting cultures at a rate of 3 over 4 cycles give 10 × 3⁴ = 810 gross cultures. Because the rate compounds each cycle, even a modest rate produces a very large number after several cycles — the heart of why micropropagation scales so fast.
What is the multiplication rate?+
The multiplication rate is how many new usable shoots or plantlets each culture yields per subculture cycle — often around 3 to 5 depending on the crop, medium and stage. A higher rate or more cycles multiplies the gross total faster, but pushing the rate too hard can lower quality and raise the loss rate later.
Why are net plants lower than gross cultures?+
Not every plantlet becomes a field-ready plant. Losses happen during rooting, hardening (acclimatisation from lab to open conditions) and transport. The survival rate you enter trims the gross cultures down to the net plants you can actually plant out, which is the figure that matters for planning sales and field area.
What is the fold increase?+
The fold increase is how many times your starting material has multiplied — gross cultures ÷ starting cultures, or simply rate ^ cycles. It shows the raw multiplying power of the protocol independent of how many cultures you began with, which is handy for comparing crops, media or cycle counts.
What is hardening and why does it cost plants?+
Hardening (acclimatisation) is the stage where lab-grown plantlets, used to humid sterile jars, are gradually adapted to normal humidity, light and microbes before field planting. It is the riskiest step — plants can wilt or succumb to disease — so survival here largely sets the gap between gross cultures and net field-ready plants.
Which crops are commonly micropropagated?+
Banana, potato, orchids and sugarcane are among the most common, along with many ornamentals, fruit rootstocks and forestry species. Micropropagation suits crops where clean, uniform, disease-free planting material at scale is valuable — which is exactly where exponential multiplication from a few cultures pays off.
How many subculture cycles should I plan?+
Enough cycles to reach your target number, but not so many that quality drifts — too many cycles can raise the risk of somaclonal variation (off-types) and declining vigour. Work backwards from your target net plants, the multiplication rate and survival, and keep cycles to the minimum that meets demand.
Are the figures precise?+
They are solid planning figures. Real yields vary with crop, medium, the skill of the lab, contamination losses and how well hardening goes. Multiplication rate and survival are rarely constant across every cycle, so treat the output as a projection, validate against your lab's records, and build in a safety margin.