Tissue Culture
- Tissue culture is a process in which very small pieces of plants (‘tissue’) are grown (‘cultured’) using nutrient media
- Because they are initially grown in petri dishes on nutrient agar we say they are grown ‘in vitro’ – outside a living organism
- How to propagate plants in vitro:
- Cells are scraped from the parent plant (these cells are known as explants)
- The cells are transferred to a sterile petri dish containing nutrient agar
- Hormones (eg. auxins) are added to encourage plants to grow into small masses of tissue (callus tissue)
- Tissue continues to grow and forms plantlets that can be transferred to individual potting trays and develop into plants
Tissue culture: using small groups of cells from part of a plant to grow identical new plants
- Clones are genetically identical individuals
- The cloning of plants has many important commercial uses
- It allows a variety of a plant with desirable characteristics to be produced:
- cheaply
- with a greater yield (a large number of plants can be produced)
- quickly
- at any time of the year
- It can also ensure diseases prevalent in other areas of the world are not imported and spread by ensuring native varieties of plants are produced in large enough quantities to supply demand in one country without importing plants from abroad
- Tissue culture can also be an important process in preserving rare plant species