Tissue culture:

It is a laboratory technique, of regeneration of a whole plant from any part of plant by growing on a culture plate with sterile (bacteria or other micro-organism free) conditions.

• The part of plant which is taken for tissue culture is called explant.
• The capacity of a cell to grow into a whole plant is called totipotency.
• The method of growing large number of plants through tissue culture is called micro-propagation.  
• The plants produced from tissue culture are morphologically and genetically similar to their parents and are called somaclones.

The nutrient medium for tissue culture must contain:

• Carbon source
• Inorganic salts
• Growth regulators(auxin, cytokinins, etc)
• Vitamins
• Amino acids

 

 

Advantages of tissue culture:

• Plants can be grown at large scale.
• Seedless plants can be made
• Disease free plants can be developed from diseased plants.
• Where sexual reproduction is absent, these plants can grow by somatic hybridization.