Orchid Cultivation and Tissue Culture Technology Video Tutorial

    Tissue culture is an advanced method of asexual propagation. A small part of a plant organ or tissue is taken, separated from the mother plant, and cultured; through induction and differentiation, it is regenerated into an independent new plant. It is also called explant culture.

    As early as 1902, the German botanist Haberlandt predicted: "Plant cells have totipotency; each cell, like an embryonic cell, can be cultured in vitro to become a complete plant." Guided by this hypothesis, the French scientists Gautheret and Nobecourt used small pieces of carrot root and in 1938 successfully cultured callus tissue in test tubes with culture medium. In 1939, the American scientist White carried out tissue culture and subculture using tobacco stem cambium and also succeeded. Their work laid the foundation for the development of plant cell and tissue culture technology. In 1949, Skoog and others in the United States differentiated seedlings from callus tissue and cultured true test-tube plants. Since then, tissue culture technology has been continuously innovated and improved, achieving rapid progress in both experiments and applications.

    

    The shoot-tip tissue culture of orchids was first successfully achieved by the Frenchman Morel in 1960. His purpose in using shoot-tip culture was to remove viruses from Cymbidium plants, and he obtained virus-free seedlings. He found that Cymbidium shoot-tip culture could gradually enlarge and form protocorm-like bodies, similar to the normal development of orchid embryos; through division and repeated culture, they could proliferate in large quantities. According to theoretical calculations, 1 explant could produce as many as 4 million seedlings within 1 year. From then on, tissue culture technology was applied to orchid propagation, and over many years it formed the factory-style, commercialized production of orchids.

    At present, various parts and organs of orchids, namely roots, stems, leaves, buds, inflorescences, immature embryos, etc., can all be used as explants for culture.

    

    Tissue culture requires necessary equipment and relatively advanced technical measures. First, there must be a culture room, a sterile inoculation room, and various culture tools and supplies. During culture, the medium must first be prepared, the explants excised, then disinfected, inoculated, and transferred, and finally the test-tube seedlings transplanted, all of which require relatively complex and meticulous techniques.