CLONING PLANTS BY TISSUE CULTURE: EARLY YEARS, CURRENT STATUS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
The method is not without serious flaws. Current procedures of plant multiplication are too laborious and slow. Faster methods, e.g., somatic cell embryogenesis, are not always achievable or applicable and may result in high incidences of mutants and other variants. Successful transfer of propagules to soil is not assured. And pathogen exclusion by current practices is largely coincidental.
Nevertheless, tissue culture can become the principal alternative in propagating all clonal cultivars. This status will be reached when labor and costs can be reduced and plant multiplication increased substantially. Some steps in the current practice will be mechanizable. Clonal seeds, produced by encapsulating somatic cell embryos, might become the method of propagating some species.
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.1987.212.1
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1987.212.1