cloning plant & tissue culture

• cutting

  Cuttings can be used to quickly and cheaply clone a desirable plant
• cutting process

  1. find a desirable plant that you want to clone
  2. cut a small part ( a growing shoot or branch)
  3. place the cutting in some soil, along with some nutrients and maybe some hormones
  4. the cutting will grow into a clone of the original plant
• Micropropagation (using tissue cultures)

  • An alternative to using cuttings is to use cell cultures to clone a plant (this is also known as 'micropropagation').
  • Although it requires more expertise than using cuttings, it can produce many more clones.
• micropropagation

  1. Find a plant with desirable characteristics that you want to clone.
  2. Take very small pieces of plant tissue (called explants) from the tips of stems.
  3. Sterilise the explants to remove any microorganisms.
  4. Place the explants in a nutrient medium (agar) and let them grow into small masses of cells called calluses. The nutrient medium should also contain growth hormones. 
  5. Transfer the calluses to soil where they can grow into plantlets (basically baby plants).
  6. The plantlets can then be transferred to their own pots to develop into genetically identical adult plants.