Perspectives of Tissue Culture in Crop Improvement

Abstract

Plant tissue culture is comprised of in vitro techniques and strategies utilized to create genetic variability in order to improve the production and productivity of the crops. Besides this, it also yields a higher number of potential plants within a limited time. The technique has been exploited in several crop species and protocols have been developed therein. Biotic and abiotic stresses including diseases caused by insect pests, several environmental and climatic issues along with drought, flooding, radiation, salinity, temperature, water logging, frost and heavy metal toxicity have an adverse effect on plant growth resulting in crop losses, productivity and simultaneously to the economic losses. Identification and development of stress-tolerant plants using in vitro selection has immense importance in the crop improvement of several plant species. The in vitro selection in sole or its combination with mutagenesis may be highly useful for the creation of genetic diversity and the development of mutants. The chapter reviews the application of tissue culture based in vitro selection techniques in the development of biotic and abiotic stress-tolerant crops.