Low Cost Tissue Culture Technologies in Vegetables: A Review

The demand of vegetable crops is increasing day by day due to changes in consumption patterns, so the need of the hour is to develop technologies that enhance the vegetable production at a rapid rate. Plant Tissue culture is one such remarkable biotechnological tool that has its application in vegetable propagation and improvement, disease elimination, herbicide resistance, salinity tolerance, incorporation of high nutrient content, genetically improved plants and conservation of endangered plant species and in the near future usage of this technology is going to increase further manifold. It is used for production of disease free quality planting material and development of varieties through direct regeneration, anther/ovule culture, somatic embryogenesis etc. or for creation of new variation (organogenesis via callus formation, soma-clonal variation and in vitro mutagenesis). In spite of being a very important and viable non-conventional biotechnological tool, high cost of production of seedlings in vitro remains a major impediment in popularization of this technology. High cost of producing seedlings is due to availability of limited resources, high recurrent costs of consumables for media and lack of awareness, which limits its application only to a few institutions and rich farmers especially in developing countries. Therefore, in order to make this technology a successful and viable option for the farmers, future thrust must be on cost reduction of in vitro seedlings. The components of tissue culture technology such as culture media components, glassware, lighting and water for media preparation can be replaced with low cost alternatives to reduce the overall cost of tissue culture. The usage of alternatives for gelling agent’s like isabgol (potato, tomato, cassava, turmeric, ginger), sago (potato, tomato, turmeric, ginger) cassava starch (potato, cassava, sweet potato) barley starch, phytagel etc. and for carbon sources like table sugar (potato, turmeric, ginger), jaggery, sugarcane juice, cube sugar (bittergord), brown sugar etc have already been documented worldwide. The present paper reviews the work done by researchers around the globe in developing various low cost alternative technologies with focus on vegetable crops.