MICROPROPAGATION PROCESS
Plant tissue culture is a collection of techniques to
grow plant cells, tissues or organs under sterile conditions. It is also known
as in vitro culture. An example is micropropagation. It is the production of whole plant from small sections of plant
such as stem tip, node, meristem, embryo or even a seed.
This process works
because plants, has the ability to reproduce the whole plant from a single
cell, this is called totipotency (ability of a single cell to express the full
genome of in the cell to witch it gives rise by cell division) and an asexual
reproduction.
In order to start a
micropropagation process, tissue is taken from the shoot apex of plant. Then,
you put the tissue on nutrient agar gel with auxin (hormone), and something
starts growing, which is called callus (soft tissue composed of unorganized and
undifferentiated group of cells). Callus can be transferred to agar gel with
cytokinin or gibberellins to stimulate root / shoot growth. Finally, you should transfer the plantlets into sterilized soil for hardening under greenhouse
environment.
Some advantages of
micropropagation process:
- Bulk up new varieties more quickly.
- Produces species that are hard to grow in other ways.
- Genetic modification can be made in a small number of plants which then give. thousands of plants carrying the desired change.
- Tiny plants can be stored until needed.
- Produce large numbers of rare plants reduce cost and don’t need to take from wild.
- Plants can be produces at any time of the year.
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