Tissue Culture, Micropropagation and Somaclonal Variation
Introduction
We have described the different media used for cell/tissue culture, and have also discussed the methods for culturing individual differentiated cells. However, in plant tissue culture experiments, unless single cell cultures are absolutely necessary, more often we use explants (pieces of differentiated tissues) to initiate their growth in culture. As discussed in the previous chapter, this is also necessary to obtain callus from which single cell cultures are derived. During the last few decades, even for development of new crops or for improvement in the characteristics of existing crops (e.g. to obtain disease free crop, etc.), the techniques of tissue culture in combination with genetic manipulation have become important tools. For instance, as an alternative to vegetative propagation, shoot tip propagation was used commercially for rapid and consistent reproduction of elite or difficult to propagate genotypes.
