Supply list for Inoculating 150 trees

Supplies for 150 Trees

• Inoculum - order from Fred at Meadowview Research Farms
• 1 quart 190-proof grain alcohol (Everclear or Vodka)
• 1 pint 70% ethanol alcohol
• 10 rolls ½"-width masking tape
• 1 cork borer sharpener
• 4 caddies to carry supplies - or, a 5 qt. ice cream bucket with handle works well
• 6 rags per team
• 6 cigarette lighters per team
• 3 cork borers - # 0 or # 1 size (about 0.4cm diameter, or 3/16") per tea
• 4 screw top test tubes for 190-proof alcohol per team
• 3 small bottles to carry extra alcohol
• 3 spatulas per team - the spatulas are about 8 " with a 1" long sharp end on one end and with a 1" long blunt end on the other.
• Couple of pint or half pint jars for ethanol weight reduction

Comments:

Why do we use two different types of alcohol?

- We use the 95% for flaming tools because it's more flammable than 70%.

- We use the 70% for surface disinfection (or disinfestation, more properly) of bark surface. The 70% is much more lethal on contact to living organisms than other strengths, because it readily penetrates cell walls and plasma membranes; the organisms get "wetter" faster in 70%, I guess because it has the same polarity as the cell walls and plasma membranes --this ties into the idea of how it can be difficult initially to get something wet. For instance, if you spill water on your clothes, you often can wipe off a significant fraction of the water before it soaks in. For living organisms, the 70% EtOH would soak in fastest, in comparison to 50% or 90%; this might also be involved with the 70% is still highly lethal to tissues, whereas 25% might not be. I'm not sure about 50%. The idea is to kill the algae, etc, on the surface of the bark, so they don't interfere with growth of the inoculum from the agar disk into the surrounding tissue.