Many plants of commercial interest are propagated in tissue culture, with some presenting difficulties in their mineral balance. Historically, this issue has been addressed by varying the mineral composition of the media hoping to find a satisfactory combination. However, a potentially more efficient approach has been successful for several species, i.e., amendment of the media composition based on the mineral content of the plantlet leaves relative to that of the young leaves of thriving, field-grown plants. We used the latter approach to address a mineral imbalance encountered in propagating the Australian native plant, spotted iron gum (Corymbia maculata (syn. Eucalyptus maculata)). The chemical analysis showed that the concentration of iron in the plantlets was far in excess of requirement, and the plantlets thrived when its concentration in the medium was decreased 10-fold. This success supports the proposition that the mineral analysis of plantlets, together with the published data on foliar sufficiency ranges, may provide an efficient, general approach to optimizing the mineral composition of media for the in vitro production of plants.

许多具有商业价值的植物通过组织培养进行繁殖，其中一些植物在矿物质平衡方面存在困难。从历史上看，这个问题是通过改变介质的矿物成分来解决的，希望找到令人满意的组合。然而，一种可能更有效的方法已经对几个物种取得了成功，即根据苗叶相对于繁茂的田间生长植物的幼叶的矿物质含量来修改培养基成分。我们使用后一种方法来解决繁殖澳大利亚本土植物斑点铁胶 ( Corymbia maculata ( syn. Eucalyptus maculata)时遇到的矿物质不平衡问题））。化学分析表明，试管苗中铁的浓度远远超出需要，当培养基中铁的浓度降低10倍时，试管苗生长旺盛。这一成功支持了这样的主张，即对植物进行矿物质分析，结合已发表的叶面充足范围数据，可以提供一种有效、通用的方法来优化植物体外生产培养基的矿物质成分。