Re-establishing plantlets from tissue culture: a review

Abstract

The literature pertinent to the re-establishment of tissuecultured plants in vivo is reviewed. The difficulties associated with survival and growth of tissue cultured plants after transplantation are attributed to the poor control of water loss from the plants and their necessity to switch from heterotrophic to photoautotrophic nutrition. Aspects discussed include: the possibility of transplanting directly from stage II shoot proliferation cultures and rooting in vivo; the importance of stage III culturing for preconditioning plants prior to transplantation; the optimum sizes of propagules and substrate preferences for transplantation; stress reduction, disease prevention, and the importance of humidity, temperature and light levels during transplantation. The relative merits of numerous approaches to transplantation by various workers for many species are discussed. Suggestions of areas in which further work is urgently required are given, along with some recommendations and general guidelines for the re-establishment of tissue cultured plants in vivo.