Artificial cloning in plants
Micropropagation using Tissue Culture
- Many plant cells are totipotent and can differentiate into all of the different types of plant cells.
- Micropropagation is the process of making large numbers of genetically identical offspring from a single parent plant using tissue culture techniques.
- Micropropagation is used when...
- The plant does not readily produce seeds.
- The plant does not respond well to natural cloning.
- The plant is very rare.
- The plant is genetically modified or has been difficult to selectively breed.
- The plant is required to be pathogen-free by growers.
- Plants can be micropropagated in a variety of ways. One procedure uses sodium dichloroisocyanurate (found in water sterilising tablets) to keep a plant sterile without being in the lab, so is particularly useful when working in the field with a rare plant.
- As the scale of micropropagation increases, it now takes place in bioreactors, resulting in artificial plant embryos to be packaged in seeds.
- Allows for rapid production of large quantities of high quality crops.
- Produces disease free plants.
- Makes it possible to produce viable quantities of genetically modified plants.
- Allows for large quantities of new plants that meet consumer needs to be produced, eg seedless varieties.
- Provides a way to grow plants which are otherwise very infertile or difficult to grow from seed.
- Reliably increases numbers of rare plant species.
- Produces a monoculture, where all genetically identical plants are susceptible to the same diseases.
- Expensive process which requires skilled workers.
- Explants and plantlets are vulnerable to disease during the process.
- If the source material is infected with a virus, so will all the clones.
- Sometimes large quantities of plants are lost during the process.