Biotechnology: A Book for Beginners

Plants are primary producers as every living organism whether it is animals, microbes or humans depends directly or indirectly on plants for their livelihood.Plant tissue culture has proven to be boom for humans as it not only helpful to provide multiple copies of plants rapidly but also helps to make better varieties, produce hybrids, virus free plants, genetically modified varieties, germplasm preservation etc. for human welfare. In simple words, plant tissue culture can be defined as culturing any living tissue in artificial nutrient media in aseptic condition under controlled environment like heat, temperature, humidity etc. Plant tissue culture technique was used to generate millions of plants by simple small piece of plant called as explant. The concept of plant tissue culture comes in existence after the discovery of cell theory by Scheliden and Schwan in 1838. They proposed that cell is basic unit of living organism and cell also has ability to develop into entire plant when appropriate nutrients and environmental condition were given to them.