Plant Tissue Culture Techniques In Crop Improvement

Tissue culture involves the use of small pieces of plant tissue (explants) which are cultured in a nutrient medium under sterile conditions. Many primary steps involved are the preparation of nutrient medium, the establishment of aseptic culture, inoculation, development of the plant in growth room, hardening of micro plants and transfer to the greenhouse. Plant tissue culture has a lot of applications in crop improvement like making successful distant crosses, shortening breeding cycles, somaclonal variants, germplasm exchange etc., There are many types of plant tissue culture techniques such as seed culture, embryo culture, shoot meristem culture, ovary or ovule culture, protoplast culture, suspension culture etc., Therefore in this article an attempt has been made to give a brief idea about the various plant tissue culture techniques and their applications.