Plant tissue culture

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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. It is widely used to produce clones of a plant in a method known as

explants
USDA
seed bank, the National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation.

Plant tissue culture relies on the fact that many plant parts have the ability to regenerate into a whole plant (cells of those regenerative plant parts are called

plant hormones
.

Techniques used for plant tissue culture in vitro

Preparation of plant tissue for tissue culture is performed under

inorganic salts plus a few organic nutrients, vitamins, and plant hormones. Solid media are prepared from liquid media with the addition of a gelling agent, usually purified agar
.

The composition of the medium, particularly the plant hormones and the nitrogen source (nitrate versus ammonium salts or amino acids) have profound effects on the morphology of the tissues that grow from the initial explant. For example, an excess of auxin will often result in a proliferation of roots, while an excess of cytokinin may yield shoots. A balance of both auxin and cytokinin will often produce an unorganised growth of cells, or callus, but the morphology of the outgrowth will depend on the plant species as well as the medium composition. As cultures grow, pieces are typically sliced off and subcultured onto new media to allow for growth or to alter the morphology of the culture. The skill and experience of the tissue culturist are important in judging which pieces to culture and which to discard.

As shoots emerge from a culture, they may be sliced off and rooted with auxin to produce plantlets which, when mature, can be transferred to potting soil for further growth in the greenhouse as normal plants.[2]

Regeneration pathways

The specific differences in the regeneration potential of different organs and explants have various explanations. The significant factors include differences in the stage of the cells in the

meristematic ends of the plants like the stem tip, axillary bud tip, and root tip.[3]
These tissues have high rates of cell division and either concentrate or produce required growth-regulating substances including auxins and cytokinins.

Shoot regeneration efficiency in

genotypes
within the same species.

The three common pathways of plant tissue culture regeneration are propagation from preexisting meristems (shoot culture or nodal culture),

embryogenesis
.

The propagation of shoots or nodal segments is usually performed in four stages for mass production of plantlets through in vitro vegetative multiplication but organogenesis is a standard method of micropropagation that involves tissue regeneration of adventitious organs or axillary buds directly or indirectly from the explants. Non-zygotic embryogenesis is a noteworthy developmental pathway that is highly comparable to that of

tissue regeneration
via organogenesis has also proved to be advantageous for studying regulatory mechanisms of plant development.

Choice of explant

The tissue obtained from a plant to be cultured is called an explant.

Explants can be taken from many different parts of a plant, including portions of shoots, leaves, stems, flowers, roots, single

diploid
. Also, the risk of microbial contamination is increased with inappropriate explants.

The first method involving the meristems and induction of multiple shoots is the preferred method for the micropropagation industry since the risks of somaclonal variation (genetic variation induced in tissue culture) are minimal when compared to the other two methods. Somatic embryogenesis is a method that has the potential to be several times higher in multiplication rates and is amenable to handling in liquid culture systems like bioreactors.

Some explants, like the

microflora
will generally overgrow the tissue culture medium before there is significant growth of plant tissue.

Some cultured tissues are slow in their growth. For them there would be two options: (i) Optimizing the culture medium; (ii) Culturing highly responsive tissues or varieties.[7] Necrosis can spoil cultured tissues. Generally, plant varieties differ in susceptibility to tissue culture necrosis. Thus, by culturing highly responsive varieties (or tissues) it can be managed.[7]

Aerial (above soil) explants are also rich in undesirable microflora. However, they are more easily removed from the explant by gentle rinsing, and the remainder usually can be killed by surface sterilization. Most of the surface microflora do not form tight associations with the

plant tissue. Such associations can usually be found by visual inspection as a mosaic, de-colorization, or localized necrosis
on the surface of the explant.

An alternative for obtaining uncontaminated explants is to take explants from seedlings which are aseptically grown from surface-sterilized seeds. The hard surface of the seed is less permeable to the penetration of harsh surface sterilizing agents, such as hypochlorite, so the acceptable conditions of sterilization used for seeds can be much more stringent than for vegetative tissues.

Tissue-cultured plants are

clones
. If the original mother plant used to produce the first explants is susceptible to a pathogen or environmental condition, the entire crop would be susceptible to the same problem. Conversely, any positive traits would remain within the line also.

Applications of plant tissue culture

Plant tissue culture is used widely in the plant sciences, forestry, and horticulture. Applications include:

Examples

Developing Somaclonal variation

Plant Somaclonal variant Traits
Sugarcane 'Ono' resistance to Fiji disease.
Citronella java 'Bio-13' (by CIMAP , Lucknow) 37% more oil

Climate resilience

- As in Kaveri Vaman (by NRCB , Tamil Nadu) , a Tissue Culture Banana Mutant to withstand heavy rains.[14]

Secondary metabolites production

- Such as Caffeine from coffea arabica, Nicotine from Nicotiana rustica.

Induction of flowering

- In trees with delay in flowering or Bamboo - where some species flower once in their life but may live longer than 50 years.[15]

See also

References

Notes

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  5. ^ Brian James Atwell; Colin G. N. Turnbull; Paul E. Kriedemann (1999). Plants in Action: Adaptation in Nature, Performance in Cultivation (1st ed.). Archived from the original on March 27, 2018. Retrieved May 7, 2020.
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  12. ^ Pawar, K. R., Waghmare, S. G., Tabe, R., Patil, A. and Ambavane, A. R. 2017. In vitro regeneration of Saccharum officinarum var. Co 92005 using shoot tip explant. International Journal of Science and Nature 8(1): 154-157.
  13. ^ Waghmare, S. G., Pawar, K. R., and Tabe, R. 2017. Somatic embryogenesis in Strawberry (Fragaria ananassa) var. Camarosa. Global Journal of Bioscience and Biotechnology 6(2): 309 - 313.
  14. ISSN 0971-751X
    . Retrieved 2023-08-31.
  15. .

Sources