Learn bits
Ecology & Environment
Mahesh

12/05/22 08:52 AM IST

Tissue Culture Plants

In News 
  • In order to boost exports of tissue culture plants, Centre, through the Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA), conducted a webinar on “Export Promotion of Tissue Culture Plants such as Foliage, Live Plants, Cut Flowers, and Planting Material” with Department of Biotechnology (DBT) accredited tissue culture laboratories spread across India. 
Plant Tissue culture 
  • It is culturing plant seeds, organs, explants, tissues, cells, or protoplasts on a chemically defined synthetic nutrient media under sterile and controlled conditions of light, temperature, and humidity.
Benefits 
  • Quickly produce mature plants.
  • Allows them to be moved with greatly reduced chances of transmitting diseases, pests, and pathogens.
  • Storage of genetic plant material to safeguard native plant species.
India’s exports of tissue culture plants:
  • In 2020-2021, India’s exports of tissue culture plants stood at US USD 17.17 million, with the Netherlands accounting for around 50 per cent of the shipments.
  • The top ten countries importing tissue culture plants from India are the Netherlands, USA, Italy, Australia, Canada, Japan, Kenya, Senegal, Ethiopia and Nepal.
Challenges faced by tissue culture plant laboratories
  • Increasing power costs.
  • Low efficiency levels of the skilled workforce in the laboratories.
  • Contamination issues in the laboratories.
  • Cost of transportation of micro-propagated planting material.
  • Lack of harmonization in the HS code of Indian planting material with other nations.
  • Objections raised by the forest and quarantine departments to the export of live planting material.
Source-PIB 

 

More Related Current Affairs View All

05 Mar

First-ever comprehensive survey of India’s river dolphins

'Prime Minister Narendra Modi released the results of the first-ever comprehensive population estimation of riverine dolphins – Gangetic and Indus dolphins – done in In

Read More

05 Mar

Arresting women at night

'The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court in Deepa versus S. Vijayalakshmi and Others ruled that the legal provision in the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023, which

Read More

05 Mar

Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023

'The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) looking to wrap up public consultations on the draft Rules for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 by Mar

Read More

India’s First Ai-Driven Magazine Generator

Generate Your Custom Current Affairs Magazine using our AI in just 3 steps