As builders and major components of peatlands, Sphagnopsida (peat mosses) are very important organisms for ecosystems and world’s climate. Nowadays many Sphagnum species as well as their habitats are largely protected, while their scientific and economic relevance remains considerable. Advanced methods of in vitro cultivation provide the potential to work in a sustainable way with peat mosses and address aspects of basic research as well as biotechnological and economical topics like biomonitoring or the production of renewable substrates for horticulture (Sphagnum farming). Here, we describe the establishment of axenic in vitro cultures of the five peat moss species Sphagnum fimbriatum Wils. and Hook., Sphagnum magellanicum Brid., Sphagnum palustre L., Sphagnum rubellum Wils. and Sphagnum subnitens Russ. and Warnst. with specific focus on large-scale cultivation of S. palustre in bioreactors. Axenic, clonal cultures were established to produce high quantities of biomass under standardized laboratory conditions. For advanced production of S.palustre we tested different cultivation techniques, growth media and inocula, and analyzed the effects of tissue disruption. While cultivation on solid medium is suitable for long term storage, submerse cultivation in liquid medium yielded highest amounts of biomass. By addition of sucrose and ammonium nitrate we were able to increase the biomass by around 10- to 30-fold within 4 weeks. The morphology of in vitro-cultivated gametophores showed similar phenotypic characteristics compared to material from the field. Thus the tested culture techniques are suitable to produce S. palustre material for basic and applied research.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11240-014-0658-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Plants have evolved markedly different body plans (= for plants also termed "bauplans"; Drost et al., 2017), but from a mechanical point of view, all plants are biological materials systems that are characterized, on the one hand, by anatomical heterogeneity caused by the specific three-dimensional arrangement of various tissues and, on the other hand, by mechanical anisotropy resulting from the various mechanical properties of the individual tissues. Despite these similarities, plants differ in their morphological features, anatomical characteristics, and mechanical properties as an adaptation to their habitat and as a response to changing environmental conditions that expose them to various and sometimes conflicting constraints. These constraints include various bending loads mainly caused by