Plant Tissue Culture and Transformation Techniques

This publication deals with various aspects of the genetic engineering -plant tissue culture and transformation techniques. Due to their biological, ecological, and geographic diversity, the demand for various horticulture crops is likely to increase manifold in the future and in order to meet such demand, there is an urgent need to concentrate on the research aspects for improvement of these crops. Plant tissue culture offers new tools to accomplish this objective. Plant tissue culture is an important are of biotechnology, which is used for the propagation of problem-species, rapid propagation of high value genotypes, production of secondary ,metabolites, etc. Tissue culture is an important step in developing new hybrids from distant parents and transgenics, and particularly cost-effective technology with palpable impact in vegetatively propagated plants, which is clearly visible in improved germplasm, enhancement of quality parameters, and supply of disease-free clones of true-to-type planting materials. Plant tissue culture is the most rapid and efficacious way to speedy production of large volumes of identical plants for specific markets. Micropropagation is the quickest way for popularization of new varieties of horticultural crops where other methods of mass multiplication of genetically pure and homogeneous planting materials are very slow. With the advent of transformation technology, it has become a useful tool to mass produce new plants with genetic material transferred from unrelated sources with the help of tissue culture. The volume contains contribution by several authors highlighting the status of genetic engineering and plant tissue culture research and development programmes in various developing countries and case studies on a few economically important crops. The publication will be of immense value to the working scientists, institutions, policy makers, and all those bearing responsibility to development, implement and intensify programmes in the related subjects in their respective countries. This book provides a good picture of the efforts being made and success already achieved in the Third World countries at various levels of development striving to secure gains from the latest advances in science and technology.