Materials and Reagents

Absorbent paper
Petri dishes (Merck, catalog number: CORM3160-150X15 )
Silica gel 2-5 mm (Merck, catalog number: 1077351000 )
Note: Dry in an oven for 24 h at 60 °C.
Filmy fern fronds collected from Katalapi Park, Chile (Garcés et al., 2018).
Note: Fully expanded fronds of about 20 cm long were used in this protocol.
Potassium chloride (KCl) (Merck, catalog number: 1049361000 )
Saturated KCl solution (see Recipes)

Equipment

Procedure

Wash the detached fronds from fully hydrated plants by soaking in distilled water for five minutes, remove excess water carefully by blotting with absorbent paper.
Place the fronds in a glass desiccator in the dark at room temperature, with 500 g silica gel (fast desiccation) or over 500 ml of a saturated solution of potassium chloride (KCl), 75% RH (slow desiccation) for 24 h.
Weight fronds every 10 min. Weight needs to be determined very rapidly.
For rehydration, place the previously desiccated fronds in Petri dishes with 10 ml distilled water in the dark for 24 h. Weight fronds every 10 min.

Recipes

Acknowledgments

This protocol was adapted from previous work (Bewley and Oliver, 1992). This work was supported by grant #11130717 from FONDECYT.

Competing interests

The author declares no conflicts of interest or competing interests.

References