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[…] any loss, damage, claim, expense, costs (including legal costs) or other liability arising in any way from the use or non- use of the information contained in this article. Acknowledgements This project has been funded by Horticulture Innovation Australia Limited (BS13004) with co-investment from Red Jewel Nursery, Sweets Strawberry Runners and the Toolangi Certified Strawberry Runner Growers Co- operative and funds from the Australian Government as well as the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries. Far Left & Top Left: Symtoms of powdery mildew on a leaf. Left: Symptom of leaf blotch. Above: Symptoms of powdery mildew on a fruit. Above Right: Symptoms of stem-end rot on a fruit. 3 P lant tissue culture is the growing of plants and plant material under sterile conditions, and it plays an important operational role in the Australian National Strawberry Varietal Improvement Program. Among other things, it is a highly useful tool for miniaturised disease- free storage of breeding lines (Figure 1) and the germination of quarantined imported seed. Our tissue cultured plants are held within the Applied Plant Biotechnology laboratory located at Maroochy Research Facility (MRF) at Nambour. This laboratory is an Accredited AQIS (Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service) tissue culture laboratory for importation of nursery stock and the provision of disease free tissue culture stock. The tissue culture laboratory not only acts as a repository or gene bank (a back-up of important plants) for the breeding program, but helps maintain traceability while providing disease free plants. Tissue culture provides the means to multiply foundation plants from nucleus stock, to initiate shoot tips from elite lines into culture, and to germinate seed to produce seedlings for each breeding season’s plantings and assessment. Advanced breeding lines previously evaluated for important traits such as fruit appearance, flavour, firmness and size, and agronomic traits such as yield and disease resistance, are sourced from field trials to introduce into tissue culture. Runner tips are sterilised, cut down to 1-2 mm in size, and transferred into jars containing growing medium (Figure 2). Once established, they are regularly inspected for signs of disease and to confirm the plants are true-to-type. Seed from the breeding program and overseas are also germinated in tissue culture at MRF. This is particularly important for introduced seed, allowing the detection of […]