History, Importances, and applications of Plant tissue Culture

1. Plant Tissue Culture
History
Meaning
Types
Applications
Importance
Prof. SD Tidke
Modern CABT, Pune

2. Plant Tissue Culture
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.

3. What’s the history?
 1838 – Schwann and Schleiden put forward the theory which
states that cells are totipotent, and in principle - capable of
regenerating into a complete plant.
 Their theory was the foundation of plant cell and tissue
culture.
 1902 – Haberlandt conducted the first but unsuccessful
attempt of tissue culture using monocotyledons.

4.  Hanning(1904) Embryo culture of selected crucifers
 Robbins (1922), In Vitro culture of root tips
 Laibach (1925) Use of embryo culture tech
 1926 - FW Went demonstrated that there were growth
substances in coleoptiles from oats.
 White (1934-37) Successful culture of tomato roots.
 Snow, Gautheret (1934-1939) Importance of auxin as growth
regulator
 Gautheret, Nobecourt, White (1939) Successful establishment
of continuously growing cultures.

5.  Van Overbeek (1941) Use of coconut milk containing a cell
division factor first time in Datura
 Skoog and Tsui (1951), Miller et al (1955), In vitro cell
differentiation, discovery of Kinetin
 Morel and Martin (1952) Application of micro grafting to
obtain virus free plants
 Muir (1953) Isolation and culture of single cells from plants
 Skoog and Miller (1957) Discovery of principle of hormonal
control of the organ formation in tissue culture

6.  Reinert and Steward (1958-59) First report on somatic
embryogenesis
 Bergmann (1960) Bergmann cell culture technique
 E C Cocking (1960) Isolation of protoplasts by enzymatic
degradation method
 Murashige and Skoog (1962) Development of MS media
 Guha and Maheshwawari (1964) Production of First haploid
plant by anther culture
 Power et al (1970) Protoplast fusion
 Takabe et al (1971) Rgeneration of first plant from protoplast

7. Meaning of Plant Tissue Culture
 In tissue culture, when a piece of plant is placed in a test tube
under sterile conditions and provided with nutrients, it will
produce tiny replicas of its parent.
 This is mainly due to the plasticity’ and totipotency’ .
 Plasticity allows the plant to alter their metabolism, growth and
development, to best suit their environment.
 When tissues are cultured in vitro, their plasticity allows one type
of tissue or organ to be initiated from another type and thus
regeneration of whole plants occur.

8.  Tissue culture serves a number of purposes like
mass production of plants, establishing or
maintaining ‘virus free’ stock etc. The natural
capacity of plants to reproduce vegetatively or
asexually is the basis of tissue culture in vitro (in
glass).

9. Types of Tissue Culture
Every parts of plants can be grow into the new plant. Parts like
root, shoot, anther, bud, etc. can be used for the growth of new
plants. On the basis of use of different parts of the plant tissue
culture can be classified into following types:
1.Shoot culture –It is the technique to grow the new plant with
help of various type of shoot such apical adventitious and
axillary shoot in the suitable condition. Different shoots can be
cultured onto the plant tissue to develop plant directly. It is also
called clonal propagation.

10. 2.Callus culture-It is the tissue culture in which large number of
plantlets can be obtained from callus. Callus is defined as the
unidentified and unorganized mass of cells. It is also known as
the pre-matured unorganized cells. Usually callus is found
around the cut edges of the plant segments when placed on the
solidified culture medium. This technique can produce the large
number of plantlets in the short duration of time. Here ,in this
process new plant is formed from Calli.

11. 3.Embryo culture-It is the type of plant tissue culture in which
embryo are use for the culture of new plant. In 1922,Knudson
was able to grow the orchid embryo into plantlets by culturing
them on agar medium which contain sugar.
4.Meristem culture-It is the plant tissue culture in which the
meristem of the plant is cultured in the laboratory in germs free
condition. Meristem is the apical tip of plant which always goes
on multiplying. As meristem is the diseases free part of the plant,
it produce the germs free plants.

12. 5.Anther culture-It is the technique of culture in which anther of the plant is
use for the production of haploid plants. In this method pollen grain of the
anther is utilized for the culture. This technique is also known as androgenesis.
With the help of this a virus free plant can obtained .It can produce the hapliod
plant.
6.Protoplast culture-Simply protoplast is the cell excluding the cell wall. It is
the technique of plant tissue culture in which protoplasm is use to obtain new
plant. Protoplasts can be obtain from various parts of plants such as leaves,
stems, callus and from pollen grain too. Single proplast can produce a
complete plant.

13. Methods of Plant Tissue Culture
 Tissue culture can be done in only two medium
i.e. liquid medium and semi-solid agar medium.
In case of liquid medium plant tissue should be
fully immersed or partially immersed but in the
case of semi-solid medium the plant tissue are just
placed on the surface of the medium.

14. Applications of Plant Tissue
Culture
 Germplasm conservation mainly in the form of
cryopreservation of somatic embryos or shoot apices.
 Large scale production of useful compounds and secondary
metabolites by using genetically engineered plant tissue
cultures.
 Technique of micro propagation for enhancing the rate of
multiplication of economically important plants.
 Eradication of systemic diseases in plants and raising disease
free plants.

15.  Soma-clonal variations are useful sources of introduction of
valuable genetic variations in plants.
 Helps plants in imparting resistance to antibiotics, drought,
salinity, diseases, etc.
 Somatic hybrids and cybrids overcome species barriers and
sexual incompatibility and produce hybrid plants with desired
combination of traits.
 Embryo culture helps in overcoming seed sterility and
dormancy.

16.  Haploid production in culture helps to solve various problems
of genetic studies and thus aids the plant breeders for
producing new varieties.
 Production of synthetic seeds via somatic embryo
differentiation for commercially important plants helps to
achieve increased agricultural production.
 Large scale production of biomass energy.
 Plant tissue culture aids in producing the genetically
transformed plants.

17.  Early flowering can be induced by in-vitro culturing of plants so
as to attain commercial benefits.
 Triploids as well as polyploid plants can also be produced by
tissue culture techniques for uses in plant breeding, horticulture
and forestry.
 Seedless fruits and vegetables can be produced by following the
endosperm culture method which add to their commercial values.
 Increased Nitrogen fixation ability can be achieved through
association of tissue culture techniques with genetic engineering.

18. Advantages of Tissue Culture
 Tissue culture is a very fast technique. Thousands of plantlets
can be produced in a few weeks time from a small amount of
plant tissue.
 The new plants produced by tissue culture are disease free.
 Tissue culture can grow plants round the year, irrespective of
weather or season.
 Very little space is needed for developing new plants by tissue
culture.
 It helps to speed up the production of new varieties into the
market place.
 In case of the seed potato industry, this technique helps in
maintaining and establishing virus free stock.

19. Importance of plant tissue culture
 A large number of plants having identical features to
the parents can be produced by this method.
 Adult plants can be produced within a short period of
time.
 Many plantlets can be produced without seeds.
 Healthy and disease free plants can be propagated by
this technique.
 Endangered plants can be preserved or conserved by
this technique.

20. Thank You