It is possible to describe tissue culture as the method of in vitro cultivation of plant or animal cells, tissues, or organs in the nutritional medium under aseptic circumstances, commonly in a glass container, under aseptic settings. A variety of terms are used to describe it, including “septic culture” and “in vitro culture.” Depending on the plant being grown, the culture media is supplemented with water, minerals, vitamins, hormones, carbon sources, and specific antibiotics, among other things. Keep in mind that the majority of plant cells are totipotent, and scientists have taken use of this trait to alter plant cells through genetic engineering to regenerate a complete plant. It is possible to create rare plants through tissue culture techniques, which are utilised to produce vast numbers of genetically identical plants for agricultural applications.
Types of Plant Tissue Culture
Plant tissue culture techniques are classified into six categories. These are the ones:
- Seed Culture: Seeds can be cultivated in-vitro to produce fully mature plants, which is a relatively new technique. It is considered to be one of the most effective ways of tissue culture for the production of sterile seedlings. The seed culture is carried out to obtain various types of explants from aseptically grown plants, which are then used to aid in the better preservation of aseptic tissue.
- • Embryo Culture: Embryo culture is the sterile isolation and growth of an immature or mature embryo in-vitro to produce a viable plant in the laboratory. Seed dormancy can be caused by a variety of factors, including mechanical resistance, chemical inhibitors, or structures that cover the embryo in some plants. The removal of embryos and the subsequent culture of the embryos in nutritional media aid in the development of seedlings.
- Meristem Culture: To produce disease-free plants, it is possible to culture the apical meristem of gymnosperm and angiosperm shoots in a laboratory setting. This method, which uses meristem tips that range in size from 0.2 to 0.5 mm, is referred to as meristem-tip culture, and it is widely used to produce virus-free plants.
- Bud Culture: Buds include active meristems in the leaf axils, which are capable of developing into a shoot when they are mature. Single node culture is a technique in which each node of a stem is cut and allowed to grow on a nutrient media to develop into a shoot tip from the axil, which then grows into a new plantlet, as opposed to multiple node culture. The axillary bud method is characterised by the isolation of axillary buds from the leaf axils and the development of these buds into shoot tips under conditions of low cytokinin concentration and high cytokinin concentration.
- Callus Culture: A callus is a more or less unorganised de-differentiated mass of cells that can form from any type of explant when grown in vitro under the right conditions. The cells in the callus are parenchymatous, although they may or may not form a homogeneous mass of cells when examined under a microscope.
- Cell Suspension Culture: It is referred to as cell suspension culture when the growth of individual cells that have been taken from any form of explant tissue or callus is observed. • Cell Suspension Culture: Cell dispersion and aeration are achieved by inserting pieces of tissue explant/callus into liquid media (without the use of agar) and shaking them vigorously for a few minutes to provide both aeration and dispersion of the cells. The cells are sub-cultured into the new media in the same way as callus culture is done.
Uses of Plant tissue culture
Tissue culture is used to create thousands of genetically identical plants from a single parent plant, known as some clones, through a technique known as micropropagation. Tissue culture is used to develop thousands of genetically identical plants from a single parent plant, known as some clones. Because it may be used to generate disease-free plants from disease-rode plants by utilising their meristems (apical and axillary) as explants, this method has an advantage over other methods in that it is more effective than other methods.
Because this process produces thousands of new plantlets at a time, it has been utilised widely in the cultivation of commercially important plants, including food plants such as tomato, banana, and apple, among others. For example, the farming of orchids has seen exponential growth as a result of the availability of millions of plantlets produced by tissue culture methods. This is the most visible example of the application of micropropagation in the field of orchid farming.
Conclusion
After understanding so much about plant tissue culture and its impact on various developing countries, it is easy to conclude that this new invention in the field of biotechnology will be around for a long period. It can assist in raising the yield of various crops, allowing them to fulfill the demands of an ever-growing population if implemented properly.
Furthermore, it is recognised that there is a significant amount of room for further research and development in this sector, and that much remains to be found.