09
Feb
2020

Biotechnology Unveiled: Plant Tissue Culture

The technique which we are going to discuss is very important and useful. It is related to the agriculture or plant biotechnology. If you are a student of bio technology and you share the same passion for plantar biotechnology as me, then this article would be a fascinating read for you.

What is plant tissue culture?

Plant tissue culture is the method of culturing various parts of a plant in an artificial medium to regenerate into a new plant. This is an in vitro process. The plant part is taken and used as an explants plant parts can be a single cell, organ or tissue. Totipotency is the key used in tissue culture to regenerate genetically identical clones, somaclonal variants or disease or pest free healthy plant on a commercial scale. It can also be used in formation of adventitious embryos, shoots or can also be used for the production of callus. There are so many useful applications of plant tissue culture through which one can make a revolution. For example if such specie of wheat plant that can grow with minimum amount of water in deserts can be obtained by using different media from explants of wheat.

Brief introduction of callus:

A callus consists of an amorphous mass of loosely arranged thin walled parenchyma cells arising from the proliferating cells of the cultured explants. Frequently, as a result of wounding a callus is formed at the cut end of a stem, root or leaf. The growth characteristics of a callus involve a complex relationship among the plant material used to initiate the callus, the composition of the medium, culture conditions, during the incubation period.

Callus is of two types:

•Friable callus (cells are loosely attached with each other )
•Compact callus ( cells are tightly packed with each other)

Establishment of a callus from explants can be divided roughly into three developmental stages:

•Induction
•Cell division
•Differentiation

Applications of plant tissue culture:

Micropropagation: it is the production of miniature planting material like seeds, embryo or plantlets in large number by vegetative multiplication through regeneration.
Somaclonal variation: It can be used to form variation in phenotype. It can also be used for variations in newly formed plant.

Secondary metabolites and synthetic seeds: both of these are the applications of cell suspension culture. Secondary metabolites can be obtained by treating callus in cell suspension culture. These secondary metabolites are by-products.

Clonal propagation: it is the process in which we can produce true to type plant from explants and physically multiply it.
Microtuberization: micro tubers are miniature potato seeds and microtuberization is the process through which we can grow plantlets in vitro.

How is plant tissue culture helpful?

•We can produce true to type plant.
•We can take up some species which are endangering species and multiply it to save those species.
•We can produce disease free plants.
•We are independent of season time. Every kind to fruits, vegetables, plant can be grown in any season.
•By making variation (mutation) in plant we can make so many species of the same plant.
•Plants which are difficult to propagate vegetatively foe them we can develop a protocol for the growth of leaflets.
•As we know that plants are also used in so many medicines so we can be obtain them by making variations.

About the author:Tarhub Asghar is a biotechnologist who has been in the field for more than two years. One day she hopes to get a PhD in the discipline. Tarhub’s other interests include browsing the very useful Hosted Exchange.
By: Tarhub Asgher

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