Question

Name important tissue culture applications and describe them in brief.

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.

• Clonal Propagation and Micropropagation: Plant population derived from a single donor plant is called a clone and the multi­plication of genetically identical copies of that cultivar is called clonal propagation which may be an useful tool to get a large population of plant species having desirable traits. Micro-propagation is achieved through multiplication of shoot tips or axillary buds cultured in vitro.
  
• Biomass Energy: Plant species like Tectona grandis, Cedrus deodara etc are useful in forestry for biomass energy production. Development of automated procedure, plant delivery systems using somatic embryos and artificial seeds are also in progress.
  
• Genetic Variability: The variability generated by the use of a tissue culture cycle has been termed as somaclonal variation by Larkin and Scowcroft. This genetic variability is due to cells of various ploidy levels and genetic constitution of the initial explant or also may be deve­loped due to different cultural conditions.
  
• Somatic Embryogenesis and Synthetic Seed: Direct or indirect somatic embryogenesis may be achieved from pro-embryonic cell of the direct explant or the embryoids developed within the callus tissue from induced embryogenic cells. The potential application of this technique is the mass production of adventitious embryos which ultimately develop into complete plantlet in maturing media.