Micropropagation :
1. It is a type of tissue culture technique by which large number of plant propagules are produced.
2. The shoot apical meristem is used as explants.
3. Using the tissue culture technique and adjusting properly the growth hormones, many shoot apices (apical buds) can be produced. These shoot apices are called micropropagules.
4. These are genetically identical and from them new individual plants can be obtained.
5. Micropropagation technique is useful for obtaining large number of genetically identical plants (clones) within short time period.
Importance :
1. Multiplication of plants becomes season independent.
2. Rare plants can be conserved by this technique.
3. Storage becomes easy as micropropagules require little space.
4. Commercial production of potato, banana, orchids etc. is possible.
5. Production of disease free plants :
(a) Tissue culture technique is used to recover the healthy plants from diseased plants.
(b) When apical meristems are used as explants, the plants produced are disease free as the apical meristem is generally free from the infection, i.e. without pathogens like viruses.
(c) Good variety of banana, potato and sugarcane is successfully recovered by culturing apical meristem.
Somatic Hybridization :
The protoplast from two different plants can be made to fuse by using fusogenic agent as polyethylene glycol (PEG).
Importance :
1. From the resultant combined protoplast by tissue culture, a new plant variety can be produced, such as
Potato + Tomato = Pomato
Raphanus + Brassica = Raphanobrassica
