Plantlets from tissue culture give rise to morphological variation compared to the original source plants. These variations may be of economic importance, when desirable variants are suitably selected. This is especially valuable in plant-breeding programs in sexually reproducing crop plants with limited variability and to induce variation in vegetatively propagated species. Somaclonal variation has been…

Developing large numbers of identical plantlets by using shoot tip or auxillary bud culture of the plant variety with the desired traits, shall supplement the present methods of sexual and asexual propagation methods. Such micropropagation is of specific use for plants difficult to propagate by these conventional methods. It offers high multiplication rates and is…

Future scope of plant-tissue culture in terms of applications in agriculture and horticulture is enormous. In our country, it is being extensively worked on toward developing improved crop varieties to feed our burgeoning population, improve dwindling forest cover, micro propagate for rapid propagation of precious trees like bamboo, teak, sandal wood, eucalyptus in addition to…

Tracing the history of plant-tissue culture, one can identify the series of land mark discoveries in this field to be originating from the proposal of cell as the basic unit of form and function of an organism. As predicted by Haberlandt, experiences with plant-tissue culture greatly expanded our understanding about the “inter relationships and complementary…

Biotechnology refers to the technology-based utilization of biological systems for generation of products to improve quality of human life. Such utilization has been happening since thousands of years in terms of agriculture (raising food crops), food production (baking, brewing, dairy products), and more recently in medicine (antibiotics from soil microorganisms). Developments in the late 20th…