Question

An explant is
A. dead plant
B. part of the plant
C. part of the plant used in tissue culture
D. part of the plant that expresses a specific gene

Answer 1

Tissue culture is a process where a small part of the plant is taken and is used to grow an entirely new plant or plants, by propagating it using growth mediums and artificial hormones. An explant is used in the tissue culture technique.

Complete answer:
Tissue culturing is the artificial culturing of entire plants from tissues or cells obtained from a grown plant. This is an important form of research technique employed in plant biological studies. Tissue culturing is done on a commercial scale for various crops that do not produce viable seeds to propagate. And propagation via tissue culturing is known as micropropagation where a single cell extracted from a part of the plant is made to divide rapidly and each cell grows into an entirely new plant. The main component of tissue culturing would be the explant. The explant is the tissue or the part of a plant obtained from the plant of interest. This explant is usually the meristematic tissue of the plant as the meristematic tissue is capable of rapid growth. Once the explanation is obtained it is placed in a culture media which consists of essential nutrients and hormones which induce root and shoot formation which eventually grows into a complete plant. The main use of tissue culturing is to obtain genetically similar plants and maintain the genetic purity of the products obtained from such plants.
Therefore, the correct option is C.

Note: Tissue culturing as the name suggests is culturing of the plant from tissue obtained from preexisting plants. Only the meristematic issue from the plant is used as only these cells are capable of division. Either a single plant can be obtained from an explant or multiple plants. The production of multiple plants from a single explant tissue is called micropropagation, where we are propagating growth at a microscopic level.