Plant Tissue Culture: Definition and Meaning, Types of Pant Tissue Culture (For CBSE, ICSE, IAS, NET, NRA 2022)

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Definition and Meaning of Plant Tissue Culture

  • It can be defined as a collection of techniques used to maintain or grow plant cells, tissues, or organs.
  • It is done under sterile conditions on a nutrient culture medium of known composition.
  • Many plant cells could regenerate a whole plant (totipotency) .
  • It uses plant material in a growing medium to grow new platelets.
  • In quick succession, the Tissue Culture helps in growing multiple uniform plants.

Types of Pant Tissue Culture

Types of Plant Tissue Culture

Seed Culture

  • This is done to get the different kinds of explants from aseptically grown plants.
    • Helps in better maintenance of aseptic tissue.
  • This is also considered the best method for raising the sterile seedling.

Embryo Culture

  • It is the sterile isolation and growth of an immature or mature embryo in vitro.
    • The goal of obtaining a viable plant.
  • The viable seedlings are developed due to the excision of embryos and culturing them into nutrient media.

Meristem Culture

  • This method is also known as meristem-tip culture, most frequently produce virus free plants.
  • Disease free plants can be obtained using the apical meristem of shoots of angiosperm and gymnosperms.

Bud Culture

It is a single nod culture wherein each node of the stem is cut and allowed to grow on a nutrient media.

Callus Culture

  • Callus cells are those cells that cover a plant wound in living plants.
  • Callus formation is induced from plant tissue samples (explants) after surface sterilization.
  • The dedifferentiated plant cells induced on media usually containing high auxin concentrations.

Cell Suspension Culture

  • It is growing of individual cells that have been obtained from any kind of explant tissue or callus.
  • There is a transfer of pieces of tissue explant/callus into liquid medium.
  • The cells are also sub-cultured into a new medium just like callus culture.

Protoplast Culture

  • It is the culture of cells devoid of cell wall.
  • In either liquid or semisolid agar media plates, isolated protoplasts are usually cultured.

Anther Culture

  • It means plant regeneration from the haploid microspore cells.
  • The aim is of haploid and dihaploid plant production.
  • To produce callus from the pollen mass, the anthers bear the uninucleate microspores that are selected and allowed to grow in medium.

Uses of Plant Tissue Culture

  • It can be used in the reproduction of a wide variety of species.
  • A plant՚s yield can be increased dramatically within lesser amount of time.
  • It can also be used to promote the survival of a rare plant or an endangered species.
  • It helps to supply the consumer market with new subspecies and variety.
  • The new plants are more likely to be free of viruses and diseases.

Disadvantages of Tissue Culture

  • It requires more labour and high cost.
  • The propagated plants may be less resilient to the diseases.
    • Due to the type of environment, they are grown in.
  • Any failure regarding the abnormalities can lead to the new plants being infected.
  • The new explants or cells՚ growth gets stunted or even die off.

FAQs

Q 1. What is a Plant Tissue Culture?

Answer: A Plant Tissue Culture can be defined as a collection of techniques used to maintain or grow plant cells, tissues, or organs.

Q 2. What are the types of Plant Tissue Culture?

Answer: There are 8 types of Plant Tissue Culture Namely Seed Culture, Embryo Culture, Bud Culture, Meristem Culture, Callus Culture, Cell Suspension Culture, Protoplast Culture, Anther Culture.

Q 3. List two important uses or advantage of Plant Tissue Culture?

Answer:

Two important uses or advantages of Plant Tissue Culture are:

i) It can be used in the reproduction of a wide variety of species.

ii) It helps to supply the consumer market with new subspecies and variety.

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