| Today's Date: Thursday December 4, 2008 |
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You are here: Home » Research |
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| Welcome to the tissue culture laboratory |
There are 3 main steps in plant tissue culture:
- Preparing plant media
- Plant surface sterilization and
- Subculture
Orchidville’s laboratory uses Vacin & Went for orchids and MS (Murashige & Skoog, 1962) for other plants.
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We perform these procedures on a variety of orchids (Phalaenopsis, Dendrobium, and Vanda) and other plants (Money plant, African violet and Ornamental ginger). |
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Introduction
The traditional skills required to propagate plants have been gradually learned over many centuries, but have been improved and extended in recent times by modern scientific investigation. Plant propagation by tissue culture is a relatively new and radical procedure that utilises the growth of very small plant organs or pieces of plant tissue. These are often termed “in vitro techniques” (literally meaning “in the glass”).
This is because the culture is often contained within glass or clear plastic vessels. In vitro propagation is also called micro propagation because miniature shoots and plantlets are initially derived. It is usually more rapid than traditional methods of propagation. The importance of plant tissue culture lies in the sterilization technique.
A part of a clean plant is cut and put in a food or plant media (the sterilized media). When that part of the plant receives vitamin hormones and sugar from the plant media and is kept in a culture room (condition room), that part of the plant will be grown. It becomes a plant or a group of callus which increases by subculture.
The end result is many plantlets, each having the same characteristics as the mother plant.
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Purpose of plant tissue culture
Apart from its use for the rapid vegetative propagation of plants, tissue culture has at least four other
potential commercial applications:
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- To remove diseases, particularly viruses, from plants;
- To conserve a disease-free stock of plants, particularly a collection of crop plants needed for plant breeding (called germplasm collection)
- To bring about genetic change and facilitate genetic engineering
- For the production and extraction of valuable chemical products from cultured plant cells, rather than directly from plants grown and harvested in fields
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Description of plant tissue culture steps
- Preparing plant media
- For the selection of the correct plannt media. The plant media performs a similar role to soil and contains the same nutrients as soil. Soil acts as a buffer,
maintaining the delicate balance of acidity and alkalinity.
But the plant media does not act as buffer, hence the need to perform subculture.
- Plant sterilizing
- For the cleaning of the plant surface. If a plant is not clean and disease free, the plant cannot grow.
- Subculture
- This step is for:
- Shoot promoting / shoot multiplication
- Root promoting
- Callus induction
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