ADVANTAGES OF MICROPROPAGATION

ADVANTAGES OF MICROPROPAGATION

Plant tissue culture in artificial environment in medium , is only known as MICROPROPAGATION .

Botanist, Frederick Campion Steward discovered “micropropagation and plant tissue culture” in late 1950s. The significance of this technique is aseptic mode of  clonal propagation over the conventional method is that over a short period of time and space , a large number of plants can be developed from a single parent .this technique of artificial plant cloning have increased 10-time the fold of crops ,it has made possible to generate 1lakhs propaguals in a periods of 6 months from a single plant. 

Micropropagation techniques are popularly known now not just to meet the demands commercially but also to utilise the techniques to improve the quality of crops and to meet the raising need of urbanisation and industrialisation.

Few advantages of plant tissue culture are :

 A small part of plant tissues are required for initiation of a crop field, over a year .A single expalnt can regenerates millions of plants in a year .

 It reduces the time taken by conventional methods in cultivation and germination of seed in normal environments by the cultivators.

 It reduces the risk of microbial infections in germination and bringing up of seeds  .

 Production of diseases free plants .

 Production of plants irrelevant to season from protoplast cultivation . 

 Germplasm storage .germplasm of many endangered species can be preserved or can be stored and used in future and can be protected from extinction .

 Artificial seed. The concept of artificial or synthetic seeds,produced by somatic embryogenesis has become popular .