Plant Tissue Culture - Applications

Applications

Plant tissue culture is used widely in plant science; it also has a number of commercial applications. Applications include:

• Micropropagation is widely used in forestry and in floriculture. Micropropagation can also be used to conserve rare or endangered plant species.
• A plant breeder may use tissue culture to screen cells rather than plants for advantageous characters, e.g. herbicide resistance/tolerance.
• Large-scale growth of plant cells in liquid culture in bioreactors for production of valuable compounds, like plant-derived secondary metabolites and recombinant proteins used as biopharmaceuticals.
• To cross distantly related species by protoplast fusion and regeneration of the novel hybrid.
• To cross-pollinate distantly related species and then tissue culture the resulting embryo which would otherwise normally die (Embryo Rescue).
• For production of doubled monoploid (dihaploid) plants from haploid cultures to achieve homozygous lines more rapidly in breeding programmes, usually by treatment with colchicine which causes doubling of the chromosome number.
• As a tissue for transformation, followed by either short-term testing of genetic constructs or regeneration of transgenic plants.
• Certain techniques such as meristem tip culture can be used to produce clean plant material from virused stock, such as potatoes and many species of soft fruit.
• Micropropagation using meristem and shoot culture to produce large numbers of identical individuals.
• Production of identical sterile hybrid species can be obtained.