PLANT TISSUE CULTURE: A TOOL TO CONSERVE BIODIVERSITY THROUGH RAPID IN VITRO REGENERATION OF DIVERSE PLANT SPECIES

Biodiversity is declining with the loss of natural forests across the world. Plant tissue culture is an important biotechnological tool to raise large number of plant species in short spa of time. However, commercial tissue culture laboratories are working on raising plantlets important for human consumption only; which mainly include fruit crops, ornamental plants, timber-yielding forest trees and medicinal plants. There is an urgent need of raising all the different plant species rapidly through tissue culture. Through cultivation of these high yielding and disease-free crops in the forests for consumption of all other species of fauna; conservation of biodiversity can be achieved. However, as tissue culture plantlets are costlier than conventionally raised plants, despite of its advantages its utility is limited. To reduce cost of an important fruit crop, banana during its in vitro regeneration, cost-effective alternatives are proposed.