Tissue Culture Laboratory at the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary | 09 Apr 2024

Source: HT 

Why in News?  

Recently, the Delhi forest department has initiated the establishment of a tissue culture laboratory at the Asola Bhatti Wildlife Sanctuary to conserve rare native trees. 

• The primary goal of the laboratory is to grow endangered native Delhi trees in a controlled environment and regenerate saplings of species facing regeneration challenges due to invasive species. 

What are key Facts about the Tissue Culture Laboratory? 

• Tissue Culture Laboratory:  
  • The lab will be able to extract plant tissue from an in-vitro fully grown plant, generating multiple trees from the same tree. 
  • The forest department will take assistance from botanists and scientists from the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE) and the Forest Research Institute (FRI). 
• Other Similar Laboratories: 
  • The National Facility for Plant Tissue Culture Repository (NFPTCR) was established in Delhi at the National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) in 1986. 
    • They carry out tissue culture experiments and research on five plant types -- tubers, bulbs, spices, plantation crops, horticultural crops, and medicinal and aromatic plants.  
• Application: 
  • The Aravalli Plan: 
    • The regeneration of ridge species like Kulu (ghost tree), palash, doodhi, and dhau is hindered by invasive species, resulting in poor survival rates, with large-scale multiplication achievable only through tissue culture, particularly shoot culture. 
    • The lab will also be useful in culturing endangered medicinal plants. 
  • Success Stories: 
    • Tissue culture has proven highly effective in agriculture, particularly with crops such as bananas, apples, pomegranates, and jatropha, offering higher yields compared to traditional farming methods. 
• Issues: 
  • Biodiversity experts have contended that cloning should be limited to "extremely rare trees" to avoid genetic homogeneity and vulnerability to specific diseases. 
    • Cloning can result in restricted genetic diversity, with the trees being clones of a single tree or plant. 
      • To avoid this, one should not restrict oneself to a single seed variety; instead, use different parent seeds or seed varieties to prevent having multiple cloned trees. 
  • Experts believe that commonly found species like khair, dhak and desi babool in the Aravallis could waste public funds, despite potential benefits for endangered or nearly extinct species. 

What is Tissue Culture? 

• Tissue culture, also known as micro-propagation, allows multiple plants to be produced from a parent plant using in-vitro tissue, which is incubated under a controlled environment.  
• Types of  Plant Tissue culture: 
  • Callus Culture: Involves cultivating undifferentiated masses of cells (callus) from explants.  
  • Cell Suspension Culture: Cultures individual cells or small aggregates of cells in a liquid medium. 
  • Anther/Microspore Culture: Used for producing haploid plants from pollen grains or anthers. 
  • Protoplast Culture: Cultures isolated plant cells without cell walls. 
• Applications of Plant Tissue Culture: 
  • Micropropagation: Rapid clonal propagation of plants by culturing small pieces of plant tissue. 
  • Soma-clonal Variation: Studying genetic variation among plant cells in culture. 
  • Transgenic Plants: Introducing and expressing foreign genes (transgenes) in plant cells. 
  • Induction and Selection of Mutations: Using mutagens to induce mutations for specific traits. 

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