Plant Biotechnology

Plant Biotechnology - Similar to biotechnology, plant biotechnology may define as generation of useful products or services from plant cells, tissues and, often, organs (very small organ explants). Such cells, tissues and organs are either continuously maintained in vitro or they pass through a variable phase to enable regeneration from them of complete plants, which are ultimately transferred to the field.

Therefore, plant tissue culture forms an integral part of any plant biotechnology activity. The various objectives achievable/achieved by plant biotechnology may be summarised as under.

1. Useful biochemical production (large scale cell cultures).

2. Rapid clonal multiplication (adventitious shoot/bulb/protocorm or SE regeneration, axillary bud proliferation).

3. Virus elimination (thermo, cryo or chemotherapy coupled with meristem culture).

4. Rapid development of homozygous lines by producing haploids (anther culture, ovary culture, interspecific hybridization).

5. Production/recovery of difficult to produce hybrids (embryo rescue, in vitro pollination).

6. Germplasm conservation of vegetatively reproducing plants or those producing recalcitrant seeds (cryopreservation, slow growth cultures, DNA clones).

7. Genetic modification of plants (somaclonal variation, somatic hybridization, hybridization, and gene transfer).

8. Creation of genome maps and use of molecular markers to assist conventional breeding efforts.

Some of these objectives, e.g., biochemical production, require continuous in vitro culture of cells for product isolation. In such and certain other cases, e.g., rapid clonal multiplication, haploid production, etc., a scaling up of the culture operations becomes essential. Scaling up may often utilize fermenters, which involve engineering disciplines like process engineering, etc.

The products from most activities, e.g., micropropagation, haploid production, etc., are plants, which are ultimately to be used for enhancing agricultural/horticultural production. Therefore, such plants often must be subjected to rigorous evaluation to ascertain their commercial value.

In many situations, they have Job utilized in suitable breeding programmes to develop a commercially utilizable plant variety; this is particularly true for activities aiming at genetic modification, haploid production, hybrid rescue, etc.

Therefore, the plants developed through a biotechnological activity should have

(i) A useful feature or features,

(ii) Must be fertile, and

(iii) The biotechnological activities must be suitably linked with active and efficient plant breeding and field evaluation programmes in order to produce a reliable and commercially viable product.