History of Plant Tissue Culture
GENETICS AND PLANT BREEDING Introduction to Plant Biotechnology Dr. Rhitu Rai Scientist National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology Lal Bhadur Shastri Building Pusa Campus New Delhi-110012 (16-07- 2007) CONTENTS History of Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology Scope and Importance of Biotechnology Tissue and Cell Culture Micropropagation Anther Culture Production of Secondary Metabolites Protoplasts Isolation and Fusion Somatic Hybrids Somaclonal Variation Germplasm Conservation Genetic Engineering and Gene Technology Methods for Gene Transfer Generation of Transgenic Plants and their identification Molecular Markers Role of Biotechnology in Crop improvement Keywords Totipotency, haploid production, cryopreservation, somaclonal variation, somatic hybrids, Agrobacterium, recombinant DNA, transgenic plants, molecular breeding 1 History of Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology Biotechnology is name given to the methods and techniques that involve the use of living organisms like bacteria, yeast, plant cells etc or their parts or products as tools (for example, genes and enzymes). They are used in a number of fields: food processing, agriculture, pharmaceutics, and medicine, among others. Plant tissue culture can be defined as culture of plant seeds, organs, explants, tissues, cells, or protoplasts on nutrient media under sterile conditions. The science of plant tissue culture takes its roots from path breaking research in botany like discovery of cell followed by propounding of cell theory. In 1839, Schleiden and Schwann proposed that cell is the basic unit of organisms. They visualized that cell is capable of autonomy and therefore it should be possible for each cell if given an environment to regenerate into whole plant. Based on this premise, in 1902, a German physiologist, Gottlieb Haberlandt developed the concept of in vitro cell culture.
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