Anti-Fungal Ingredients for orchid germination medium?

[SvenLittkowski]

1.
I consider to add a small trace of a systemic fungicide to the orchid germination medium (OGM) I am creating. Is that advisable? And if so, how much systemic fungicide powder should I add for one liter of OGM?

The aim is simply to prevent that fungal contamination leads to the loss of entire flask contents.

2.
Can 20-20-20 fertilizer be added in small traces, too, to the OGM? How much for 1 liter?

3.
What influence would silicates have to the OGM and the orchid seeds? This is merely for cosmetic application as I want to use a small amount of black mica color powder to give a dark color to the OGM, in order to see better the germinating seeds.

[zainal abidin]

As far as I'm concern never use systemic fungicide as they can inhibit the germination of some seeds but if you want to try that is a good idea...try and error.Frankly speaking if you use autoclave at 15 to 20 psi for 15 to 20 minutes we dont have any problem with fungal infections but the problem arise when you want to sow them without laminar flow success rate very low but still have another technique to improve.
For the fertilizer you can take one tea spoon or one gram add into one liter the best always choose that contain a lots of micro elements. .

[SvenLittkowski]

Thanks a lot for your good advise, Zainal. I did as you suggested: small amount of fertilizer, and I also tried a very small amount of SF.

What do you think about question #3?

[zainal abidin]

Thanks a lot for your good advise, Zainal. I did as you suggested: small amount of fertilizer, and I also tried a very small amount of SF.

What do you think about question #3?

I have no experience for ? no 3 maybe somebody expert here will contribute their knowledge and expertise, so sorry Swen.

[SeanHoutman]

You asked about silicates, they probably won't affect the seeds at all. Mica is pretty much inert in the conditions of an orchid flask.

[SvenLittkowski]

That's great news! Thanks!

[Halloamey]

Sven Methyisochlorothiazolinone is the product you should look into. From literature I know this is the principal product in a range of antifungal/ antibacterial products used by tissue culture labs
Methylchloroisothiazolinone - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[PaphMadMan]

20+ years ago Benomyl was a common anti-fungal added to plant tissue culture media. That wouldn't be the choice today, but the concept is sound as long as you choose something without toxicity problems. I have no idea what that would be, but do consider that whatever you choose to try there is no point to adding it at such a low level that it won't inhibit fungi.

Silicates in general won't normally cause any problems, but mica has many different forms, with different chemical compositions. It should be chemically inert, but you wouldn't usually want to add aluminum, barium or cesium to germination media, for instance. Probably harmless, but have you considered charcoal powder for dark color instead?

[SvenLittkowski]

Hi, thanks a lot for the suggestions and advises. I will check for these fungal and algae inhibitors. Yes, I started to use charcoal, but not to make the media darker. I am not sure, how much activated charcoal 100 ml of media should have.

[PaphMadMan]

The Orchid Seed Bank Project website has a large compendium of media formulations. There would certainly be some examples there of how much activated charcoal to use. Maybe some with anti-fungals too.