Explain the process and chief applications of micropropagation.

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Micropropagation is the use of tissue culture to multiply a single superior plant into very large numbers of genetically identical (clonal) plantlets in a short time. A small explant, typically a shoot tip or axillary bud, is established on a sterile nutrient medium and, under the right balance of growth regulators, proliferates into new shoots or a callus; individual shoots or plantlets are then repeatedly sub-cultured onto fresh medium to multiply the material further, before being rooted and gradually hardened off to ordinary soil and atmospheric conditions. Because every plantlet arises from the same parent, all are genetically identical and typically virus-free, since the technique commonly starts from meristem tissue. Micropropagation's chief applications are in vegetatively propagated crops where cuttings or tubers would otherwise carry forward an …

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CBSE 2025Set ANNUAL1 mark
$Q. Which method of plant breeding can be used to obtain many genetically identical saplings of endangered species?$
›Reveal solutionSolution

Micropropagation (in vitro tissue culture / clonal propagation) — small explants of an endangered plant are cultured on nutrient medium to rapidly generate large numbers of genetically identical, disease-free saplings.

Micropropagation via tissue culture produces many identical clones from one endangered plant.

Micropropagation is a technique of plant tissue culture in which a small piece of plant tissue (explant — meristem, shoot tip, or even a single cell) is grown aseptically on a nutrient medium containing appropriate hormones. The totipotent cells divide and differentiate to regenerate complete plantlets, which are genetically identical clones of the parent. Because thousands of plantlets can b …

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CBSE 2022Set ANNUAL1 markMCQ
$Q. Virus-free plants can be obtained by$
(a) culturing shoot apex
(b) treating the plants with Bordeaux mixture
(c) giving antibiotic treatment to seeds
(d) none of these
›Reveal solutionSolution

The shoot apical meristem is virtually free of viruses even in an infected plant, so culturing it in vitro produces virus-free clones.

Even when a plant is systemically infected with a virus, the actively dividing cells of the shoot apex (apical meristem) usually remain free of the virus because the virus's rate of multiplication/movement is slower than the rate of growth of the meristem, and the meristem lacks a well-developed vascular system through which viruses typically spread. By excising just this virus-free meristematic tip and growing it in vitro using tissue-culture techniques (meristem culture), a large number of virus-free plants can be regenerated and propaga …

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Q.Explain the process and chief applications of micropropagation.

Concept understanding — Micropropagation

Q.Explain the process and chief applications of micropropagation.

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