Micropropagation Research in India
There is widespread interest in micropropagation in India, with several private companies involved in this venture at a commercial scale. In mid 1980s with the help of National Chemical Laboratory, Pune, a private company (A.V. Thomas and Co. = AVT, Cochin) established its first small scale production laboratory at Manalaroo in Kerala for cloning cardamom plants from its own farm collections. Later, AVT also established a modern and well equipped laboratory in Cochin, with an annual turnover capacity of around eight million (8×106) plants. These pioneering efforts by AVT led to the development of the district of Ernakulam as the first ‘biotechnology district’ in India. Consequently, several other entrepreneurs entered the field. Another private company based in Bangalore is Indo-Americal Hybrid Seeds (IAHS), which is involved in the production of hybrid flower and vegetable seeds, with a turnover of 10 million plants per annum.

DBT had also funded a project, to study the performance of high yielding tissue culture clonal cardamom plantlets in a 100-ha area. Under this project, AVT multiplied buds from elite cardamom selections identified by Cardamom Research Institute. A National Facility for Plant Tissue Culture Repository (NFPTCR) has also been established at National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NHPGR), New Delhi. This repository is using tissue culture to conserve accessions of economically important crops like tuber and bulbous crops, spices, fruit crops, medicinal and aromatic plants and endangered plant species.