article · Horticulturae
Micropropagation through plant tissue culture is critical for the large-scale production of economically important plants, enabling rapid, year-round multiplication of true-to-type propagules within limited space. However, commercial micropropagation encounters significant challenges arising from biological, genetic, physiological, and technical factors, alongside operational hurdles such as overproduction, poor infrastructure, and a shortage of skilled technicians. Key problems include contamination, subculture delays, tissue browning, burned or albino plantlets, recalcitrance, in vitro rooting difficulties, shoot tip necrosis, hyperhydricity, shoot abnormalities, somaclonal variations, and in vitro habituation. Many of these abnormalities can be resolved or prevented by strictly following tailored micropropagation protocols suited to specific plant species. Resolving facility-related constraints, such as incomplete laboratory setups and scarce funding, is also vital to sustaining efficient plant tissue culture.
Micropropagation is vital for meeting agricultural and horticultural demands by rapidly producing uniform, high-quality plants year-round. Identifying the causes of common physiological and technical failures helps plant producers reduce costly crop losses. By detailing solutions to these recurring problems, this work supports the reliability and efficiency of commercial plant tissue culture operations.
This review directly targets commercial plant-tissue-culture laboratories and nurseries seeking to optimise large-scale production and reduce batch losses. The guidance is based on established protocols and operational practices, making it an immediately applicable troubleshooting reference for commercial technicians and laboratory managers rather than an early-stage discovery.
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The production of micropropagated plants in plant-tissue-culture laboratories and nurseries is the most important method for propagation of many economic plants. Micropropagation based on tissue-culture technology involves large-scale propagation, as it allows multiplication of a huge number of true-to-type propagules in a very short time and in a very limited space, as well as all year round, regardless of the climate. However, applying plant-tissue-culture techniques for the commercial propagation of plants may face a lot of obstacles or troubles that could result from technical, biological, physiological, and/or genetical reasons, or due to overproduction or the lack of facilities and professional technicians, as shown in the current study. Moreover, several disorders and abnormalities are discussed in the present review. This study aims to show the most serious problems and obstacles of plant micropropagation, and their solutions from both scientific and technical sides. This review, as a first report, includes different challenges in plant micropropagation (i.e., contamination, delay of subculture, burned plantlets, browning, in vitro rooting difficulty, somaclonal variations, hyperhydricity, shoot tip necrosis, albino plantlets, recalcitrance, shoot abnormalities, in vitro habituation) in one paper. Most of these problems are related to scientific and/or technical reasons, and they could be avoided by following the micropropagation protocol suitable for each plant species. The others are dominant in plant-tissue-culture laboratories, in which facilities are often incomplete, or due to poor infrastructure and scarce funds.
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DOI: 10.3390/horticulturae8080677
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