• Preparation of a DNA sample in the laboratory
    Cell and tissue culture

Cell and tissue culture

Overview

In short
Using individual plant cells, entire plants are regenerated on growth media in the lab.

Advantages
Quickly generate many identical offspring of one plant.

Disadvantages
All crops and tissue types require their own “recipe”.

Development
Since the beginning of the 20th century. Practical use from the 1970s onwards.

Application at KWS
Cultivation of sugarbeets, corn, rapeseed, wheat, barley and rye.

Plants have a special feature that distinguishes them from many other creatures: They are totipotent. In principle, each individual plant cell can regenerate an entire plant. This involves taking tissue fragments or individual cells from a plant and putting them on special growth media in the lab, where the cells can grow and further divide. Eventually, an entire plant can be regenerated from the lab-grown tissue.

This allows us to very quickly generate genetically identical offspring from a single plant in the lab. However, different crops and tissue types require specific procedures unique to them.

KWS has acquired significant experience in this area over the last few decades. Cell and tissue cultures form the basis for many biotechnology applications and test methods at KWS. Especially valuable is the method to create double haploid lines in hybrid breeding (DH lines). But cell and tissue cultures also play an important role in the genetic transformation of plants.

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