European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

HAND BOOK OF STUDIES ON IN VITRO MICRO PROPAGATION AND PROTOPLAST ISOLATION OF CUCUMIS MELO L. VAR. UTILISSIMUS

Dr. Mandaloju Venkateshwarlu

ABSTRACT

The aim of this book is to provide detailed “Studies on In Vitro Micro propagation and Protoplast isolation of Cucumis melo Linn. Plant tissue culture (PTC) broadly refers to cultivation of plant cells, tissues, organs, and plantlets on artificial medium under aseptic and controlled environmental conditions. PTC is as much an art as a science. It is the art of growing experimental plants, selecting a suitable plant organ or tissue to initiate cultures, cleaning, sterilization and trimming it to a suitable size, and planting it on a culture medium in right orientation while maintaining complete asepsis. It also requires an experienced and vigilant eye to select healthy and normal tissues for subculture. PTC involves a scientific approach to systematically optimize physical (nature of the substrate, pH, light, temperature and humidity), chemical (composition of the culture medium, particularly nutrients and growth regulators), biological (source, physiological status and size of the explant), and environmental (gaseous environment inside the culture vial) parameters to achieve the desired growth rate, cellular metabolism, and differentiation. The most important contribution made through PTC is the demonstration of the unique capacity of plant cells to regenerate full plants, via organogenesis or embryogenesis, irrespective of their source (root, leaf, stem, floral parts, pollen, endosperm) and ploidy level (haploid, diploid, triploid). PTC is also the best technique to exploit the cellular totipotency of plant cells for numerous practical applications, and offers technologies for crop improvement (haploid and triploid production, in vitro fertilization, hybrid embryo rescue, variant selection), clonal propagation (Micropropagation), virus elimination (shoot tip culture), germplasm conservation, production of industrial phytochemicals, and regeneration of plants from genetically manipulated cells by recombinant DNA technology (genetic engineering) or cell fusion (somatic hybridization).

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