Summary: Applications of Plant Cell and Tissue Culture Systems

Abstract

Plant cell and tissue cultures originated from basic studies where they serve as model systems for many areas of research in botany, dealing mainly with growth and differentiation. A short summary shall indicate possibilities of practical use of these systems, which to date have only been little exploited. One area of application broadly used is the propagation of plants. Commercially, this is currently certainly the most important application of cell and tissue culture systems (Fig. 1.1). Most prominent are meristem cultures in broadest terms, first used for the propagation of orchids (Morel 1963, 1974), and later for other ornamental plants (Chap. 7). During recent years, methods were developed also for the propagation of woody plants of importance for recultivation of forest areas, e.g., affected by “acid rain”. Cell culture techniques will always be applied to propagate highly valuable single plants not suitable for cloning by cuttings, due to morphological and/or anatomical constraints. Propagation by meristem culture will also be employed to produce virus-free plants from infected mother plants. Usually, meristems of virus-infected plants are virus-free, and by culturing meristems, virus-free plants can often be obtained. A detailed description of such methods was given in Section 7.2.