| What is Plant Tissue Culture? |
Just as every person is different and unique, so is each plant. Some have traits like better color, yield, or pest resistance. For years, scientists have looked for methods to allow them to make exact copies of these superior individuals.
Plants usually reproduce by forming seeds through sexual reproduction. That is, egg cells in the flowers are fertilized by pollen from the stamens of the plants. Each of these sexual cells contains genetic material in the form of DNA. During sexual reproduction, DNA from both parents is combined in new and unpredictable ways, creating unique plants.
This unpredictability is a problem for plant breeders as it can take several years of careful greenhouse work to breed a plant with desirable characteristics. Many of us think that all plants grow from seeds. However, researchers have now developed several methods of growing exact copies of plants without seeds. And they are now doing this through a method called “tissue culture”.
Tissue culture (TC) is the cultivation of plant cells, tissues, or organs on specially formulated nutrient media. Under the right conditions, an entire plant can be regenerated from a single cell. Plant tissue culture is a technique that has been around for more than 30 years. Tissue culture is seen as an important technology for developing countries for the production of disease-free, high quality planting material and the rapid production of many uniform plants.
Micropropagation, which is a form of tissue culture, increases the amount of planting material to facilitate distribution and large scale planting. In this way, thousands of copies of a plant can be produced in a short time. Micropropagated plants are observed to establish more quickly, grow more vigorously and are taller, have a shorter and more uniform production cycle, and produce higher yields than conventional propagules.
Tissue culture technique
Tissue culture is a process that involves exposing plant tissue to a specific regimen of nutrients, hormones, and light under sterile, in vitro conditions to produce many new plants, each a clone of the original mother plant, over a very short period of time.
There are three main steps to the tissue culture process.
STAGE I is the initiation phase. It concerns the establishment of plant tissue in vitro by sterilizing the material and initiating it into culture.
STAGE II is the multiplication phase. At this stage, the in vitro plant material is re-divided and placed in a medium with plant growth regulators that induce the proliferation of multiple shoots. This process is repeated many times until the number of plants desired is reached.
STAGE III is the root formation phase. It involves the introduction of hormones to induce rooting and the formation of complete plantlets
Following these three stages, the plants are then moved from the laboratory to the greenhouses for acclimatisation and further development.
Need:
- When large-scale propagation of new or superior plant varieties is required for early introduction to market
- When mass multiplication is needed for varieties which are difficult to regenerate by conventional methods of propagation
- When disease-free plant propagation is important
- AgriForest’s tissue culture plants are characterised by disease free growth, a more fibrous, healthier root system, a bushier branching habit, and a higher survival rate.
Advantage:
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