Tag: tissue culture

Tissue culture is a biological technique which involves the development of the plant by the totipotent cells under the controlled condition on a nutrient culture medium of the known composition. The totipotent cells are taken from the active part of the plant like root, stem leaf, pollen etc. The plant part which is used for the culture is known as explant. 

Callus is unorganized actively dividing mass of cells maintained in culture. It has meristematic cell which has ample amount of cytoplasm to trigger cell division. It is an undifferentiated mass of cell which differentiates when treated with the growth hormones to promote cell division, differentiation and morphogenesis. It heals the injury in the cell as callus has meristematic cell which replaces the worn out and damaged cell by rapid cell division and it can also replace damage tissue developed in the region of wound.

Totipotency is the ability of the plant to generate new cell by cell division. A cell from leaf is made to grow into complete plant under culture conditions. The cell of the leaf used for the culture is taken from the tip of the leaf and it has ample amount of meristematic cell. The meristematic cell of the leaf is grown on a cultured media it develops into a undifferentiated mass of callus. The cells of callus have active nucleus and cytoplasm so they are totipotent. The totipotent cells of callus differentiate on treating with growth hormone. Callus when treated with auxin it promotes rooting and when it is treated with cytokinin it stimulates cell maturation, differentiation and finally, promotes the development of stem. 

F.C. Steward is associated with tissue culture and played an important role in developing the techniques. Caplin and Steward were the first one to use coconut water as a plant growth regulator in the nutrient media. Later on, it was considered as a substitute for cytokinin. He was also involved in the somatic embryogenesis in carrot cell suspension cultures and production of complete plants. He also laid the foundation of micropropagation technique.

Callus is a growing mass of unorganized plant parenchyma cells. It is mainly  used in plant tissue culture. So basically in other words, callus is a undifferentiated mass of tissue. 

• The process by which thousands of plants can be raised within limited time and space is Tissue culture.
  
• When new plants are grown from a small piece of plant tissue or cells removed from the growing tips of a plant in a suitable growth medium is called tissue culture.
  
• Its advantages are:-

Meristem is free from viruses and they are used to grow virus-free plant cultures. The meristem has the ability of rapid rate of mitotic cell division, which is much more than the viral rate of division. Hence, the virus is unable to spread through them, hence the meristems are almost always free of viruses.

Tissue culture is the growth of tissues or cells in an artificial medium separate from the organism. Plant parts can be sterilized by using several disinfecting agents i.e., use of chemicals.