PLANT TISSUE CULTURE
Background
Plant research often involves growing new plants in a controlled environment.
These may be plants that we have genetically altered in some way or may be
plants of which we need many copies all exactly alike. These things can be
accomplished through tissue culture of small tissue pieces from the plant of
interest. These small pieces may come from a single mother plant or they may
be the result of genetic transformation of single plant cells which are then
encouraged to grow and to ultimately develop into a whole plant. Tissue
culture techniques are often used for commercial production of plants as well
as for plant research.