Plant Tissue Culture is a process that uses plant material in a growing medium to grow new platelets. The initial plant material is cultured and developed in a specific and tightly controlled environment.
Otherwise known as micropropagation, the Tissue Culture Process helps you to grow multiple uniform plants in quick succession.
This process is beneficial for developing countries looking to increase crop yield, a private at-home grower interested in producing consistent quality, as well as businesses looking to produce exact replicas of a species for profit.
While the process is simple, there are a few key factors that need to be in place. Without the proper sterile environment and growing medium, the tissue culture process is unlikely to be successful.
Once the new plants have been successfully propagated, they are transferred into a more natural environment, either a nursery or a greenhouse. This process is usually much quicker, and growers can produce many plants in a short amount of time.
By using the tissue culture process, a plant’s yield can be increased dramatically, and in a short amount of time. The plant can also be genetically altered so that it becomes immune to certain diseases and viruses. Genetic modification enables growers to ensure that plants carry very specific characteristics. In many cases, businesses and individuals will propagate the plants to carry specific traits that are more profitable for their business, or more desirable for personal use.
The tissue culture process can be used to promote the survival of a rare plant or endangered species.
Uses of TC technology in Asia
Tissue culture has been refined to suit the needs of orchid species and hybrids known to grow well in Southeast Asia. Judging from the experience of Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia, the ornamental and cut flower trade is a substantial source of foreign exchange and additional income for small growers.
In Thailand, tissue culture is used to reproduce slow-growing and environment-sensitive orchids. Thailand is the leader in tissue culture in Southeast Asia, producing 50 million plantlets a year. Most of these are orchids, which have helped the country become the biggest exporter of whole and cut orchids in the world.
Micropagation by shoot culture technique has been developed for the mass propagation of bananas. In the Philippines, this is used as a control approach to viral diseases in bananas such as banana bunchy top virus (BBTV) and banana bract mosaic virus (BBrMV), which are commonly spread through propagative materials.
