Liquid culture system: An efficient approach for sustainable micropropagation

Abstract

Micropropagation of important forestry, horticultural and medicinal plants have made revolutionary changes in terms of research and commercialization. However, there are a variety of factors which influence the scaling-up and commercialization aspects, which decide whether mass propagation will be effective and lucrative. Low rates of shoot multiplication, increased costs of media components, loss of cultures due to contamination, and difficulties with hardening and acclimation are the key obstacles to scaling up micropropagation technology. These restrictions have forced a large number of in vitro technologies developed for a range of plant species to be used only under research laboratories settings. To apply tissue culture technology to large-scale propagation, it is required to develop techniques that are relatively simple to adopt, have high multiplication rate with high levels of reproducibility, and exhibit higher survival of plantlets when transferred to ex vitro conditions. Efficient techniques include utilization of liquid culture systems and replacement of agar with other gelling agents. These techniques allow development of micropropagules that not only function better in post-vitro soil conditions and are comparatively less expensive, but will also help develop a workable micropropagation technique that can be applied to the mass production of desirable plant species. The current review describes liquid culture system as an efficient approach to produce large number of plants at low production cost.