Axenic In Vitro Cultivation Of 19 Peat Moss (Sphagnum L.) Species As A Resource For Basic Biology, Biotechnology, And Paludiculture

Sphagnum farming can substitute peat with renewable biomass and thus help mitigate climate change. Large volumes of the required founder material can only be supplied sustainably by axenic cultivation in bioreactors. We established axenicin vitrocultures from sporophytes of 19Sphagnumspecies collected in Austria, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia, and Sweden:S. angustifolium,S. balticum,S. capillifolium,S. centrale,S. compactum,S. cuspidatum,S. fallax,S. fimbriatum,S. fuscum,S. lindbergii,S. medium/divinum,S. palustre,S. papillosum,S. rubellum,S. russowii,S. squarrosum,S. subnitens,S. subfulvumandS. warnstorfii. These species cover five of the six EuropeanSphagnumsubgenera; namely,Acutifolia,Cuspidata,Rigida,SphagnumandSquarrosa. Their growth was measured in suspension cultures, whereas their ploidy was determined by flow cytometry and compared with the genome size ofPhyscomitrella patens. We identified haploid and diploidSphagnumspecies, found that their cells are predominantly arrested in the G1 phase of the cell cycle, and did not find a correlation between plant productivity and ploidy. DNA barcoding was achieved by sequencing introns of theBRK1genes. With this collection, high-quality founder material for diverse large-scale applications, but also for basicSphagnumresearch, is available from the International Moss Stock Center.