2
$\begingroup$

Here is the problem: Tissue culture is cloning, and all plants from the same mother plant are identical. On the other hand, plants grown from seed are all different. If parent plants are genetically diverse (not inbred), growing from seed is the best thing in the long run.

The problem starts when some plants have a low germination rate, or are difficult to grow from seed. We want to grow a large number of plants as fast as tissue culture does, but we want diversity. Suppose the plant can produce a large number of seeds or at-least can produce them easily.

Can we extract cells from the seed and grow them via tissue culture? Which part of the seed should be used, and how different it is from using vegetative parts such as the apical meristem?

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
0

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1
$\begingroup$

Yes. It's quite common, to the degree that it's done by some hobbyist plant breeders. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embryo_rescue However, AFAIK (I'm not an expert), it wouldn't be done for raising multitudes of plants, like tissue culture.

Rather, it's used in hybridization, where you hope to produce hybrids from plants that don't readily hybridize. You would typically rescue a number of embryos, grow them on until mature, then perhaps use tissue culture to mass-propagate the ones that have interesting characteristics.

Improve this answer
$\endgroup$
1
  • $\begingroup$ Can you add some more references to this (i.e. not just a Wikipedia page)? $\endgroup$
    – arboviral
    Commented Mar 16, 2018 at 9:58

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .