Plant Tissue Culture: Theory and Practice, a Revised Edition Posted by R Santhosh Kalash on 10/08/2013 08:43:00 pm No comments

Since the publication of this book, in 1983, several new and exciting developments have taken place in the field of Plant Tissue Culture, and it now forms a major component of what is popularly called Plant Biotechnology. Many of the important crop plants which were then regarded as recalcitrant are now amenable to regeneration from cultured protoplasts, cells, and calli, enabling subjection of these crops to improvement by biotechnological methods of cell manipulation. Embryogenic cultures can be established for most of the important crop plants, including many hardwood and softwood tree species.

During the last decade the emphasis of research in tissue culture has been on its industrial and agricultural applications. Chief among the proven applications of plant tissue culture are the routine use of androgenesis in plant breeding programmes (Chapter 7), development of new varieties through somaclonal and gametoclonal variant selection (Chapter 9), production of industrial compounds (Chapter 17), regeneration of transgenic plants from genetically manipulated cells (Chapter 15), clonal propagation of horticultural and forest species (Chapter 16), and conservation of germplasm of crop plants and endangered species (Chapter 18). In the process of translating the laboratory protocols into commercial protocols several problems were identified and research was focused on finding solutions thereof. Until the early 1980s, for example, most of the contributions on somatic embryogenesis concerned the differentiation of structures that resembled embryos but when the protocols were critically examined for application to commercial plant propagation it was soon realized that the somatic embryos showed an extremely low degree of germination owing to their physiological and biochemical immaturity. This necessitated introduction of an additional stage of embryo maturation to ensure an acceptably high rate of conversion of somatic embryos into plantlets. Concurrently, mass production of somatic embryos in bioreactors has been studied and synthetic seed technology has been developed to facilitate their mechanized field planting. Fermentor technology has also been developed for large scale plant cell culture (Chapter 4) required in industrial production of secondary plant products.

These developments and the gratifying world-wide response the earlier edition of this book received, provided the impetus to update it under the earlier title. All the chapters in the first edition have been thoroughly revised without disturbing the original character. Two new chapters, one on 'Production of Industrial Compounds' (Chapter 17) and another on 'Genetic Engineering' (Chapter 14), have been added. The chapter on 'Cytogenetic Studies' has been revised with emphasis on applied aspects and retitled as ~Variant Selection' (Chapter 9).

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