As we have already mentioned in previous articles during the last decades, the technique of "in vitro" culture has gained special interest for the establishment of various plants for the production of compounds or to obtain healthier crops with specific genetic characteristics.
▶ In agriculture in the area of in vitro culture technique, explants are called the various portions of tissue, single cells, protoplasts, spores, pollen grains or seeds.
▶ Credits: Plantcelltechnology. – [Image of Public Domain]
The type of explant to be used in micropropagation processes depends on the species being worked with and the objectives pursued. Explants such as apical meristems and axillary buds are genetically very stable, this type of explants are used to produce multiple clones of a form or variety with special characteristics that are desired to maintain in culture.
Other explants such as adventitious buds are rather genetically unstable and produce a high degree of variability in clones. This procedure is not useful for the production of seedlings with a certain cultivation characteristic, but it is useful for plant breeding, since by means of this semi-natural variation, it is possible to obtain new crop lines.
Thus, from the point of view of plant species conservation, the appearance of uncontrolled and random spontaneous variation during the in vitro culture process becomes an unexpected and undesired phenomenon in most cases.
The explants end up being biological inputs in the asexual reproduction of plants by tissue culture is possible because, in general, the cells of an individual plant possess the necessary capacity to allow the growth and development of a new individual, without any type of fusion of sex cells or gametes.
NOTE: Reference material.