Plant Tissue Culture

Plant tissue culture is a collection of techniques used to maintain or grow plant cells, tissues or organs under sterile conditions on a nutrient culture medium of known composition. Plant tissue culture is widely used to produce clones of a plant in a method known as micropropagation. Different techniques in plant tissue culture may offer certain advantages over traditional methods of propagation, including:

• The production of exact copies of plants that produce particularly good flowers, fruits, or have other desirable traits.
• To quickly produce mature plants.
• The production of multiples of plants in the absence of seeds or necessary pollinators to produce seeds.
• The regeneration of whole plants from plant cells that have been genetically modified.
• The production of plants in sterile containers that allows them to be moved with greatly reduced chances of transmitting diseases, pests, and pathogens.
• The production of plants from seeds that otherwise have very low chances of germinating and growing, i.e.: orchids and Nepenthes.
• To clean particular plants of viral and other infections and to quickly multiply these plants as 'cleaned stock' for horticulture and agriculture.

Plant tissue culture relies on the fact that many plant cells have the ability to regenerate a whole plant (totipotency). Single cells, plant cells without cell walls (protoplasts), pieces of leaves, stems or roots can often be used to generate a new plant on culture media given the required nutrients and plant hormones.

1. What is Totipotency?

- The ability of a plant cell to give rise a whole plant is called Totipotency.

2. What is explant ?

- The portion of the plant that is taken from the parent plant for culturing on nutrient media is called explants.

3. What is Callus?

- The Explant often divides to give rise to an unorganised mass of tissue called callus.

4. What is Embryo Rescue?

- Embryos that do not develop inside the ovary can be grown in culture media. This is called Embryo Rescue.

5. What are the applications of plant Tissue culture?

Application of plant Tissue culture:

1. Desirable plants can be rapidly multiplied.

2. Multiplication can be done throughout the year in a small space under controlled conditions.

3. It is possible to obtained plants that are free from pathogens particularly viruses.

4. Embryos that do not develop inside the ovary can be grown is culture media.

5. Plants tolerant to drought, pathogens etc, can be isolated by creating these conditions in the culture medium.

6. New hybrid species can be evolved by Tissue culture.

Fill in the blanks

1. Tissue culture was first observed by ________

2. Haploid plants obtain commonly by introducing _______ in culture media .

3. Development of haploid plants through tissue culture was discovered by _______ and ______

4. The ability of a plant cell to give vise a whole plant is called _______

ANSWERS

1. Haber landt

2. Pollen grain

3. Shipra Guha and Satish Maheswari

4. Totipotency