Plant Tissue Culture: A Journey from Research to Commercialization
Tissue culture was a subject of academic interest for a long time. In recent years, it has become a useful tool for agriculture and medicine. It has therefore been a popular area of biological research. Considerable amount of literature has been generated, but it is not commensurate with the results obtained. The continuous and non organized exploitation has resulted in many medicinal plants becoming rare, and a good number have even become extinct. Therefore, tissue culture has emerged as a science with a vast potential for human welfare ranging from large scale plant production in horticulture and forestry, human health, plant protection as well as environmental protection. In vitro rejuvenation holds remarkable potentials for the production and superior plant based medicine. There are mainly four approaches for in vitro germplasm preservation, which may lead to development of a tissue bank; cryopreservation, normally growing and multiplying shoot culture, slow growth culture and regenerative long term excised root culture. The main parameter for evaluating the worth of these approaches includes practicability, prolonged retention of regenerative potentiality and the least chances of genetic instability.