ACPC offers clean-up therapy on berries, including blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry, etc. (Find more information on selected crops- Arkansas Clean Plant Center).

Currently, ACPC is accepting 15 introductions every year for clean-up (subject to change in the future). A standard requirement for each introduction is a single mother plant, which can provide a minimum of five meristems and 20 grams of plant tissue for HTS (Diagnostics | Arkansas Clean Plant Center).

The first 15 introductions in ACPC are covered under NCPN funding. Exceeding this number will cost $4,000 per clean-up round for clean-up/testing and $1,500 per year for maintenance.

Clean-up therapy that is covered under NCPN funding is thermotherapy (treatment of mother plants at high temperature in diurnal conditions, i.e., 25°C/37°C @ 4h of periodic intervals for up to 3-4 weeks depending on the crop) followed by meristem inoculation.

Breeders have an option (with extra cost) on the advancement of clean-up therapy, including chemotherapy (treatment of meristems with anti-pathogenic chemical, i.e., ribavirin, etc.) or cryo-therapy (treatment of meristems in ultra-freezing temperature @-196°C) or their combination with or without thermotherapy. The cost of a stand-alone and combined clean-up therapy will be updated soon.

Based on the standard operating procedure (SOP) for clean-up, the mother plant will be subjected to heat treatment (i.e., thermotherapy), followed by meristem inoculation for plant regeneration under in vitro conditions in the first few months of receiving the sample. Once regenerated, plantlets will be sub-cultured for multiplication and rooting, followed by their hardening in soil.

Every introduction will go through one clean-up treatment and four rounds of HTS (one before clean-up treatment and three after) for a total of a two-year testing cycle.

Every introduction received by the ACPC will be processed as described in the flow chart outlined below.