Micropropagation

Micropropagation is the practical application of totipotency to solve a very ordinary problem: how to multiply a single superior plant -- one that combines high yield, disease resistance and good quality, whether bred conventionally or simply an outstanding individual found in a farmer's field -- into thousands of identical copies quickly, without waiting for it to set seed and without the genetic reshuffling that sexual reproduction would introduce.

How it works

A small explant taken from the chosen parent plant (commonly a shoot tip or an axillary bud, since these already contain actively dividing meristematic tissue) is established on a sterile nutrient medium. Under the right balance of growth regulators, the explant proliferates into a mass of new shoots or an undifferentiated callus; individual shoots, or plantlets regenerated from the callus, are then repeatedly sub-cultured onto fresh medium, multiplying the original explant's genetic material many-fold at each cycle, before finally being rooted and gradually acclimatised (hardened off) to normal soil and atmospheric conditions outside the sterile culture vessel.

Why it matters …