Tissue culture

The tissue culture lab in KFRI has standardised tissue culture technology for various forest trees, such as teak, sandal, bamboo, calamus, and many other endangered, endemic, and threatened tree species. Most of these technologies are commercially recommended for large-scale propagation of forest trees.

Plant tissue culture is based on the principle of totipotency, which means that many plant cells have the ability to regenerate a whole plant. This includes single cells, plant cells without cell walls (protoplasts), pieces of leaves, and, less commonly, roots. These can be used to generate a new plant on culture media, provided with the necessary nutrients and plant hormones. The main advantage of this technique is the production of exact copies of the parent plant.

The tissue culture lab is a facility in the Department of Biotechnology under the Forest Genetics and Biotechnology Division. Equipment includes laminar airflows, autoclaves, bioreactors, high-speed refrigerated centrifuges, PCR machines, spectrophotometers, nano drops, gel electrophoresis and gel documentation units, ice flaker machines, and deep freezers.