ABSTRACT
Plant cell and tissue culture offers a number of nonconventional approaches that may supplement the conventional method of crop improvement. The improvement of agricultural crops has until recently been largely con„ned to conventional breeding approaches. Such programs rely on interspeci„c sexualhybridization of plants that have desirable heritable characteristics and on naturally or arti„cially induced random mutation. Plant tissue culture is also away to study the mechanism by which cells differentiate, thereby providingan experimental approach to link genotype with phenotype. Organ redifferentiation can be manipulated in dedifferentiated tissue (callus) by subjecting it to the interacting inŠuence of awhole host of plant growth regulators and nutrient constituents. Plant tissue culture permeates plant biotechnology and cements together its various aspects; to alarge extent, the tissue culture revolution has occurred because of the needs of this new plant biotechnology. The past few years have witnessed an ever-increasing interestin plant cell and tissue culture and its application of in vitro techniques to plant breeding, clonal propagation, and disease eradication.
