For Students of

Prof. Rajendra Singh (Rajju Bhaiya) University

B Sc. – Biotechnology, Sem- II

Paper- Plant Biotechnology BT- E 202

Prepared by

Dr Priya Srivastava

Head, Department of Biotechnology

KAPG College Prayagraj

Plant Tissue Culture Plant tissue culture is a art of science which contain all the tools and techniques by which a

whole plant body is developed by single cell/ tissue/organ invitro. It also said that tissue culture

is a collection of various tools and techniques by which isolated organ, tissues, cells etc. Of

plants are grown in nutrients medium in laboratory under controlled aseptic environmental

conditions.So we can say that “ Plant tissue culture is a technology to maintaining and growing

singlr cell/ tissue/ organ under controle environmental conditions.”

The History of Tissue and Organ Culture

Tissue culture as a techniques was first used almost 100 years ago to elucidate some of the most

basic questions in developmental biology. Ross Harrison at the Rockefeller Institute, in an

attempt to observe living, developing nerve fibers, cultured frog embryo tissues in plasma clots

for 1 to 4 weeks (Harrison, 1907). He was able to observe the development and outgrowth of

nerve fibers in these cultures. In 1912, Alexis Carrel, also at the Rockefeller Institute, attempted

to improve the state of the art of animal cell culture with experiments on the culture of chick

embryo tissue.

The purpose of the various experiments was to determine the conditions under which the active

life of a tissue outside the organism could be prolonged indefinitely. It might be supposed that

senility and death of cultures, instead of being necessary, resulted merely from preventable

occurrences; such as accumulation of catabolic substances and exhaustion of the medium . . . . It

is even conceivable that the length of life of a tissue outside the organism could greatly exceed

its normal duration in the body. (Carrel, 1912)

Carrel succeeded in expanding the possibilities of cell culture by keeping fragments of chick

embryo heart alive and beating into the third month of culture and growing chick embryo

connective tissue for over 3 months. Using apparatus such as that shown in given Fig.

A pic of the tissue culture apparatus used at the turn of the century.

Carrel reported growing chick embryo tissue for many years in vitro, and thus helped convince

the scientific community that in vitro cultures were useful experimental systems.

Katherine Sanford and co-workers (1948) observed that single cells could be grown in culture by

their experiments. Harry Eagle's (1955) demonstration that the complex tissue extracts, clots, and

so forth previously used to grow cells could be replaced by an arbitrary mixture of amino acids,

vitamins, co-factors, carbohydrates, and salts, supplemented with a small amount of serum

protein , opened up a new area of cell culture.

In 1902, Haberlandt, a German botanist have reported culture of isolated single palisade cells

from leaves in Knop’s salt solution supplemented with sucrose. They observed that the Cell

remained alive for up to 1 month, increased in size, accumulated starch, but failed to divide. This

was the beginning of tissue culture.

Various efforts were demonstrate totipotancy led to the development of techniques for

cultivation of plant cell under defined conditions. In 20 century, R. J. Gautheret in France and

P. R. White in USA have made possible to get success in plant tissue culture.

The first embryo culture , was described and done by Hanning in 1904, he cultured nearly mature

embryos of certain Crucifers and grew them to maturity.

By using their technique Laibach, in 1925 recovered hybrid progeny from an interspecific cross

in Linum.