Why Plant Tissue Culture?
Most new plant varieties come about because someone planted a seed and it grew into a plant whose fruit (or root or leaves) were different in a desirable way. Sometimes new varieties come about due to a mutation that occurs in a plant. (Pink grapefruits started this way, from a single branch on one tree in an entire grove of standard white grapefruit). If a seedling variety is different enough someone will want to propagate it. It might be propagated for profit of to just spread the new plant out into the world. TC is useful here in that you can get a large number of identical plants quickly, once you figure out the protocol. As an example: I like Hippeastrum (Amaryllis) and sometimes cross-pollinate them. Suppose I got one that had a rich blue flower, how would I propagate it to make enough to sell? I could grow the bulb and then save the offsets and cut the bulb in hopes of building up some stock over time. To get 10,000 clones would take years. I could also use TC to produce my new
