Plant Tissue Culture in Relation to Developmental Cytology

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on the plant tissue culture in relation to developmental cytology. The maintenance and growth of plant cells in vitro under aseptic conditions constitutes the plant tissue culture. Relatively little definitive work has been done in the general area of developmental plant cytology through the application of the tissue or cell culture techniques. Observations of polyploidy and other nuclear deviations in plant tissues are largely explicable as a disorganized manifestation of normal tendencies of somatic cells. The prevailing nuclear condition of a tissue culture can be seen to be responsive to differences in the medium and in the culture method. Thus, there are tools available for the experimental manipulation of these processes. In some cases, for example, Haplopappus, the problem may be one of finding conditions that minimize the aberrations, thereby supplying as clean a point of departure as possible for the full utilization of this excellent cytological tool. A promising approach is the microculture technique, with the necessary improvements, coupled with periodic photographic records or with microcinematographic studies of the same cell over a long period. Such studies, with various environmental factors carefully controlled, could be invaluable to a correlation of various events with the eventual fate of a cell.