Development of remote controlled mericlone system

In this study, we developed an intuitive remote-controlled manipulator system that was operated using a touch panel display and a mouse. We examined its application possibility to pick out the shoot apical meristem from sprouting potatoes. The shoot apical meristem is not easily affected by plant viruses. Therefore, we can obtain a virus-free seedling that has a high production efficiency by culturing this part. This technique is called “mericlone” and is known widely in agriculture; however, it is tedious because of the precision work involved with a microscope. Thus, our system not only reduces the burden on the technician but also has high precision control and saves space. In this study, using the loop-mediated isothermal amplification method, we confirmed that we could get the potato meristems that do not contain Potato Virus X. The newly designed primer set can achieve results more rapidly, more easily, and with higher sensitivity than other virus detection methods, thus indicating the possibility of industrial implementation.