Question

Describe the tissue culture technique and what are the advantages of tissue culture over conventional methods of plant breeding in crop improvement programmes.

Answer 1

Growth of tissue or cells in an artificial environment away from their parent organism. It is also called micropropagation.

Complete answer:
It is a method which is used in biological research where the fragments of tissue from an animal or plant are transferred to an artificial environment and in that environment they continue to survive and function. Another name of tissue culture is micropropagation.
This technique is facilitated in a liquid, semi-solid or solid growth medium, example for medium is broth or agar.
Plant tissue culture technique is used to grow plant cells and this is performed under aseptic conditions under the HEPA filtered air. The plant material is obtained from plants and the tissue is grown in sterile containers like petro dish with the proper control of temperature and this sterilisation is done in chemical solutions like alcohol and sodium hypochlorite. Then these sterile explants are placed on the surface of a solid culture medium which is composed of inorganic salts and organic nutrients, vitamins and plant hormones.
The call is formed when the cultures grow and this callus is an undifferentiated mass of cells which divides and the cells are then transferred to a new media in order for its growth. For the root and shoot formation, hormones are added and when they are mature then they can be transferred to potting soil for growth in greenhouses as normal plants and later these are transferred to the fields.
Advantages of Tissue culture over conventional method of plant breeding in crop improvement programmes-
Regulation of fruiting and flowering can be regulated in tissue culture while in case of conventional methods, fruiting and flowering cannot be regulated.
Seed dormancy can be eliminated in case of tissue culture but in conventional methods it becomes difficult to eliminate seed dormancy.
Plants produced are virus-free by the method of tissue culture while in conventional methods, it is difficult to produce virus-free plants.
In tissue culture, the selection of the superior recombinant can be done whereas in case of conventional methods, it is not possible.

Note: Plant tissue culture technique is widely used in the plant sciences, forestry and in many other fields and this is mainly used as potting, landscape, etc. This method is really important because it contains various plant nutrients in the form of agar and there are also plant hormones which are important for the growth of plants. Due to this method, virus-free plants can be produced easily.