Question

List any applications of tissue culture.

Answer 1

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. 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. The applications of tissue culture are as follows:

1. To conserve rare or endangered plant species.
   
2. To cross-pollinate distantly related species and then tissue culture the resulting embryo which would otherwise normally die (Embryo Rescue).
   
3. To rapidly study the molecular basis for physiological, biochemical, and reproductive mechanisms in plants, for example in vitro selection for stress tolerant plants.
   
4. For chromosome doubling and induction of polyploidy, for example doubled haploids, tetraploids, and other forms of polyploids. This is usually achieved by application of antimitotic agents such as colchicine or oryzalin.