PLANT TISSUE CULTURE

Plant tissue culture is a technique of growing plant cells, tissues, organs, seeds or other plant parts in a sterile environment on a nutrient medium.

• The production of clones 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 reduces disease transmission.

 

Adult plant cells are totipotent, meaning they have the ability to give rise to a fully differentiated plant.  Because of this, it is possible to collect cells from a mature plant and use those cells to produce clones that plant.

Plant tissue Culture Basics

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• —  Modern plant tissue culture is performed under aseptic conditions

• —  Living plant materials from the environment are naturally contaminated on their surfaces (and sometimes interiors) with microorganisms, so surface sterilization of starting material (explants) in chemical solutions (usually alcohol and sodium or calcium hypochlorite is required).

• —  Explants are then usually placed on the surface of a solid culture medium, but are sometimes placed directly into a liquid medium, when cell suspension cultures are desired.

• — Culture media are generally composed of inorganic salts plus a few organic nutrients, vitamins and plant hormones.

• —  As cultures grow, pieces are typically sliced off and transferred to new media (subcultured) to allow for growth or to alter the morphology of the culture. 

Plant Tissue Culture Applications

• —  The commercial production of plants used as potting, landscape, and florist subjects

• —  To conserve rare or endangered plant species.

• —  To screen cells rather than plants for advantageous characters, e.g. herbicide resistance/tolerance.

• —  Large-scale growth of plant cells in liquid culture in bioreactors for production of valuable compounds, like plant-derived secondary metabolites and recombinant proteins used as biopharmaceuticals.

• —  To cross distantly related species by protoplast fusion and regeneration of the novel hybrid.

• —  To produce clean plant material from stock infected by viruses or other pathogens.

• —  Production of identical sterile hybrid species can be obtained.