25 May 2022

A Blog On Tissue Culturing House Plants!

Anjali Singh, MS

As a content and community manager, I leverage my expertise in plant biotechnology, passion for tissue culture, and writing skills to create compelling articles, simplifying intricate scientific concepts, and address your inquiries. As a dedicated science communicator, I strive to spark curiosity and foster a love for science in my audience.

Table of Contents

Apart from being a decorative element, the indoor plants make us feel alive, lively, and fresh. And, because of their beautiful structures and patterns, they are most demanded by our people worldwide. Mostly, the plants available in nurseries are either grown by using cuttings or seeds. However, these conventional techniques are slow and prone to diseases. An alternative is the use of the tissue culture technique. It’s an advanced technique for the mass production of disease-free plants.

Introduction

The housing plants are very popular among collectors, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and even culturists.

These beautiful plants lift the spirit of the room and indoor environment in a completely unique and refreshing way.

Don’t you feel it?

However, do you know that the craze for growing these housing plants has accelerated to multifold in the Pandemic? Yes! More and more numbers of indoor plants have been bought by people and cultivating plants has become a new hobby for many.

Apart from being a decorative element, the indoor plants make us feel alive, lively, and fresh. And, because of their beautiful structures and patterns, they are most demanded by our people worldwide.

Mostly, the plants available in nurseries are either grown by using cuttings or seeds. However, these conventional techniques are slow and prone to diseases.

An alternative is the use of the tissue culture technique. It’s an advanced technique for the mass production of disease-free plants.

In this article, you will learn what is tissue culture and its role in propagating housing or indoor plants. Moreover, you will also learn what kind of indoor plants can you use to start tissue culturing!

What Is Plant Tissue Culture?

Plant Tissue Culture is one of the propagation techniques used to grow plants in artificial conditions, suiting plants’ growth. In this method, cells, tissues, or small segments of plant parts (called explants) are sterilized, cultured on a nutrient media, and incubated in a suitable environment for their growth and development.

The technique is suitable if you want to achieve the any/all the following goals:

• Uniform growth of plants
• Rapid mass production of plants
• Obtain disease-free plants
• Conserve plants
• Propagate plants independent of their seasons
• Grow plants in a small space
• Overcome the challenges of cultivating some plants by using traditional propagation techniques.

There’s much more you can do with tissue culture. In research labs, it’s an integral part of almost every time of research, whether it’s producing secondary metabolites, new plant varieties, or playing around with plant genes.

Different techniques are involved in tissue culture processes, which include organ culture, callus culture, embryo culture, ovary culture, and many more. All these techniques act differently and are used to achieve different purposes. Here you can learn in deep about all the types of tissue culture techniques.

What are Housing Plants?

Housing plants or houseplants are the plants that are grown in houses, offices, restaurants, etc, for decorative purposes. Apart from being a decorative element, some of these plants also have positive psychological effects, help in reducing indoor pollution, purifying indoor air, and absorbing volatile compounds such as formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, and benzene.

Most indoor plants are either succulents, cacti, tropical, or semitropical epiphytes. Some of these plants require too much, however, some like cacti and succulents require lesser care. One thing that you much ensure is that overwatering or underwatering these plants will kill them. So, get to know the plants and learn their requirements, including how much light they require, how moist soil should be, and temperature and humidity requirements.

A few examples of the popular indoor plants include Jade plants, Spider plants, Aloe vera, Peace Lily, African Violet, Weeping Fig, and Baby rubber plant.

Which Indoor Plants Can Be Tissue Cultured?

Almost all plants can be tissue cultured. However for many of them, a proper tissue culture technique is not available, and researchers and culturists are trying to create a procedure that is more efficient, cost-effective, and provides higher-end products.

But, some indoor plants that are popularly and extensively grown by tissue culture hobbyists, culturists, and enthusiasts are Cacti, Philodendrons, Monstera deliciosa, Alovera, African Violet, Variegated Pedilanthus, Petra Croton, Syngonium, and Cordiline.

How To Take Care of Tissue Cultured Plants?

Tissue culture plants are petted in a controlled environment. In labs, they are taken care of like babies, away from pollution, in a sterile condition, with sufficient nutrients and minerals for their growth and development, and exact temperature and humidity to support their healthy growth.

When plants are in labs, you need to check the followings:

• Plants have a sufficient amount of media
• There’s no contamination in the culture vessels
• There’s no browning of the media
• Plants are growing well and on their time
• Sub-culturing the plants at a right time interval
• Plants are not too crowded and have proper space to grow
• Complete sterile conditions are maintained for the plants
• The temperature and humidity are set according to the requirements of the plants

However, after plantlets have developed roots, and they are ready to move to normal conditions, these are the things that you should take care of:

• Transfer plants in the suitable size of the pot with the correct sterile moss or peat ratio (differs for different plants, so check what suits your plant of interest).
• Do not directly transfer the plants into the natural environment.
• First, move the plants to the greenhouse with a cap to control humidity. Gradually remove the cap from the plants to prevent shocking the plants and allow them to adjust to the provided environmental conditions.
• After a few weeks, when it seems plants are doing well in the greenhouse, move them to natural conditions.

That’s it!

Tissue culture is an efficient technique to grow these plants on a large scale. And, nowadays many people as hobbyists and enthusiasts are trying to grow and try out their plants in tissue culture.

Have you started doing tissue culture of your plants yet? Let me know by writing at the given email ID. It’ll be amazing to connect with you and learn about your experience.

How Plant Cell Technology Is Helping Culturists Worldwide In Their Tissue Culture Application?

Plant Cell Technology is helping tissue culturists around the world by providing unique and world-class products and services that smoothen their process. It has MS media, agar, gellan gum, Plant Preservative Mixture (PPM), culture vessels, Biocoupler (TM), and masks in its store to facilitate your processes.

And, that’s not it! Plant Cell Technology also offers consultation services to culturists of all sizes that help to get instant solutions to your tissue culture problems.

So, visit plantcelltechnology.com today and find out more about our product and services and how they help you to excel in your tissue culture processes.

Happy Culturing!!