Tissue culture is basically a technique that includes the propagation of plants by culturing cells or tissues.
Plant parts like buds, flowers, anthers, stems, leaves and meristematic tissues possess a property. Due to this property plant cells retain the ability to get developed into any plant part when grown under exact nutritional requirements. Thus various nutrient media are there which contain different compositions of vitamins, minerals, ions etc.
Initially, the culturing of cells led to an undifferentiated mass of callus called as “callus” and then this callus is manipulated under the influence of various factors such as hormones, vitamins, minerals, light, water etc. this callus develops into plantlet which is then transferred to separate pots.
Applications of this technique are,
• By this technique virus or disease-free plants can be generated.
• Various homozygous diploids that are commercially important can be produced by this.
• Plants that cannot produce seed or produce unviable seeds e.g. banana, seedless grapes etc. can be grown by this technique.
• It is widely used for research purposes in order to study plant behavior under variable conditions.
• Original plant lines or pure lines can be preserved by this technique.
