Tissue Culture Plants

In News

• Recently, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), conducted a webinar on “Export Promotion of Tissue Culture Plants such as Foliage, Live Plants, Cut Flowers, and Planting Material”.

About Webinar

• The webinar is held with Department of Biotechnology (DBT) accredited tissue culture laboratories spread across India. 
• Objective: To find ways to boost exports of tissue culture plants.

Tissue Culture Plants

• Meaning: 
  • Plant tissue culture is defined as culturing plant seeds, organs, explants, tissues, cells, or protoplasts on a chemically defined synthetic nutrient media under sterile and controlled conditions of light, temperature, and humidity.
• Applications of Plant Tissue Culture:
  • micropropagation using meristem and shoot culture to produce large numbers of identical individuals
  • screening programmes of cells, rather than plants for advantageous characters
  • large-scale growth of plant cells in liquid culture as a source of secondary products
  • crossing distantly related species by protoplast fusion and regeneration of the novel hybrid
  • production of dihaploid plants from haploid cultures to achieve homozygous lines more rapidly in breeding programmes
  • as a tissue for transformation, followed by either short-term testing of genetic constructs or regeneration of transgenic plants
  • removal of viruses by propagation from meristematic tissues

Importance of APEDA 

• It could provide financial assistance to export oriented plant tissue culture laboratories to improve efficiency, Quality of plants.
• Helping the laboratories to meet the phyto-sanitary norms of the importing countries.
• Enhancing laboratories competence in the international market. 
• Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS): 
  • It is being run by APEDA to help laboratories upgrade themselves so as to produce export quality tissue culture planting material. 
  • It also facilitates exports of tissue culture planting material to diversified countries through market development, market analysis and promotion and exhibition of tissue culture plants at international exhibitions and by participating in buyer-seller meets at different international forums. 

Potential in India

• India is bestowed with knowledge, biotech experts with vast tissue culture experience as well as with a low-cost labour force to help produce export-oriented quality planting material. 
• All these factors make India a potential global supplier of an extended and diversified range of quality flora to the international market and, in turn, earn foreign exchange.
• Importing countries: 
  • The top ten countries importing tissue culture plants from India are the Netherlands, USA, Italy, Australia, Canada, Japan, Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia and Nepal. 
  • In 2020-2021, India’s exports of tissue culture plants stood at US$17.17 million, with the Netherlands accounting for around 50% of the shipments. 

Challenges

• Low efficiency levels of the skilled workforce in the laboratories, 
• Contamination issues in the laboratories, 
• Increasing power costs, 
• Cost of transportation of micro-propagated planting material, 
• Lack of harmonisation in the Harmonised System (HS) code of Indian planting material with other nations and 
• Objections raised by the forest and quarantine departments which were posing challenges in the export of live planting material.

Way Ahead

• APEDA should organise an international exhibition in India to showcase the various kinds of flora such as tissue cultured plants, forest plants, potted plants, ornamental and landscaping planting material available in India. 
• The organisation should take the lead in sending a trade delegation abroad to identify new markets for tissue culture plants from India and finalise deals with importers.

Source: PIB