24 Jun 2022

Types Of Tissue Culture Techniques And Their Uses

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

Tissue culture is an important tool in plant research labs and industries to produce plants and plant-based compounds on a large scale. The technique uses a small fragment of plant or plant tissues to grow a whole plant out of it.

Overview

Tissue culture is an important tool in plant research labs and industries to produce plants and plant-based compounds on a large scale. The technique uses a small fragment of plant or plant tissues to grow a whole plant out of it.

Tissue culture uses a property of plant cells, called “totipotency”. Each plant cell has the power to develop into any type of cell and a complete plant f provides all essential requirements and a suitable environment.

Figure: An illustration of a plant tissue culture process.

Also, you must know that tissue culture is not a single technique. Rather, it’s a collection of a number of techniques, each designed to achieve specific purposes.

So, by the end of this article, you're going to learn all about the types of plant tissue culture techniques, including how they differ from each other and their uses.

Types of Plant Tissue Culture Technique

Plants can be grown under in vitro conditions using any part of plants, such as leaves, stems, roots, bud, and meristem. Thus, based on the parts of the plant used in the process, tissue is branched into different methods.

Callus Culture

A callus is an undifferentiated mass of cells, having the potential to develop any part of the plants. Also, callus can also be developed under in vitro conditions using explants from any part of the plant.

Under the suitable condition, the callus develops into shoot primordia and form somatic embryos.

You should also note that callus formed from explants of different plant species might have different structures and growth patterns. Also, to prevent nutrient depletion they are required to be cultured for every 28 days interval.

The callus growth mainly depends on two factors, which include the type of explant, nutrient composition, and growth conditions.

Figure: Image of a callus culture.

Protoplast Culture

Protoplast is a plant cell without a cell wall. In this method, the cell wall of plant cells is removed by using either mechanical or enzymatic methods. Then, they are purified and the wall is again regenerated in artificial conditions and transferred to suitable media for development into a complete plant.

The technique is mainly used to produce hybrid plants or genetically transformed plants. Generally, during the process, two protoplasts from two different species are fused together and cultured in a suitable environment.

The techniques generally used to grow protoplasts are:

• Hanging-drop cultures
• Micro culture chambers
• Soft agars matrix

Embryo Culture

Embryo culture, as the name suggests, is isolating and culturing either immature or mature embryos of the plant for the whole plant development. In this method, embryos are not separately sterilized, rather the organ, such as ovule, seed, or fruit, from which they are isolated is sterilized and then used in the process.

In some plants, seed dormancy due to mechanical resistance or chemical inhibitors restricts the growth and development of plants. Thus, in such cases, embryos from the plant are isolated and cultured in artificial to develop into viable seedlings. The technique is also helpful to rescue embryos from getting aborted due to incompatible intergeneric or interspecific crosses.

Cell Suspension culture

Cell suspensions can be obtained either directly from the explant or callus. In this method, tissues are transferred to liquid media and continuously agitated to obtain a suspension of single cells.

The obtained single cells can be cultured using many techniques, such as:

• Filter paper raft nurse tissue technique
• Microchamber technique
• Microdrop method
• Bergmann’s plating technique

Ovary Culture

In this technique, fertilized or unfertilized ovaries of the plant species are cultures in a suitable environment to develop into a whole plant. It’s also known as gymnogenesis.

The technique is mainly used to overcome pre-fertilization and post-fertilization barriers. It has also been used to achieve interspecific hybrids.

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!!