In-vitro propagation of bamboo species by Reva flora culture: A successful example of commercialization of bio-technological applications in forestry
Abstract
Bamboo is a versatile crop. It can be used in 1, 500 different ways including as food, a substitute for wood, building and construction material, for handicrafts and paper. Around 80 per cent of bamboo forests lie in Asia with India, China and Myanmar having 19.8 million hectares of bamboo. India is the world’s second largest cultivator of bamboo after China, with 136 species and 23 genera spread over 13.96 million hectares. According to the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, India’s annual bamboo production is estimated at 3.23 million tonnes. However, despite all this, the country’s share in the global bamboo trade and commerce is only 4 per cent. Bamboos are very diverse, arborescent, perennial and non-wood forest trees classified under grass family with very vast sociological, environmental and commercial importance. Propagation techniques are in practice for bamboo, such as seed propagation, clump division, rhizome and culm cuttings etc. But these traditional techniques coupled with many serious limitations or disadvantages for fulfill the large or mass scale demand of genuine quality planting materials propagation. At present for large scale production of quality planting material don’t possible only through these classical methods, and in this situation, mass multiplication of genuine quality planting material of bamboo with fast pace is possible only through highly technical method or in-vitro tool of micro-propagation. Classical methods are largely in -efficient and also unsafe for the production of insect-pest free quality planting material. For mass scale propagation, largely insufficient and inefficient and micropropagation is the only viable bio-technological tool / method. Indeed, the order of magnitude of the demand for bamboo planting material indicates that micropropagation will largely inevitably be necessary for large scale propagation. According to very early history of plant tissue culture, attempts to induce the isolated cells into generating tissues masses by cell division were successful at achieving limited growth with root-explants of Pisum, Zea and Gossypium, and that was a bright spot during 1922 -1938 period by Kotte (1922a, b)) and Robbins (1922a). The potential of micro-propagation for production of insect-pest free good quality genuine planting material or mass scale propagation of bamboo has provided high hopes and a lot of research has been focused on the development of protocols for large and rapid scale propagation. These encompass optimization and establishment of in vitro culture techniques including micropropagation, somatic embryogenesis, in vitro flowering, macro proliferation, field performance and clonal fidelity. This research note briefly provides the state-of-the-art information on tissue culture mediated biotechnological interventions made in bamboo for large scale plant production through micropropagation, that being the need of the hour. Bio-technology has made very crucial contribution to the development of different forest and horticultural crops ranging from mass propagation of elite varieties, developing disease free stocks, in the directed breeding of new cultivars or varieties for sustainability in Agro-forestry. In October 2006, the Government of India (GOI) had launched the National Bamboo Mission (NBM) on the basis of the National Mission on Bamboo Technology and Trade Development Report, 2003. Reva flora Culture is a ISO 9001:2008 certified and recognized by NCS-TCP (Department of Bio-technology) tissue cultured lab situated at near Village-Borlai dist. Barwani (M.P.) and produced genuine good quality planting material of different species of green gold or bamboo as per demand of the different organizations including Govt. of M.P., Maharashtra, Telangana, Assam, U.P. and Bhutan and produced more than 35.00 lakhs of bamboo plants with the production stock of 49000 lakhs of different species of bamboo.
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Introduction
Bamboo is a versatile crop. It can be used in 1, 500 different ways including as food, a substitute for wood, building and construction material, for handicrafts and paper. Around 80 per cent of bamboo forests lie in Asia with India, China and Myanmar having 19.8 million International Journal of Advanced Biochemistry Research 2026; SP-10(1): 457-463 hectares of bamboo. India is the world's second largest cultivator of bamboo after China, with 136 species and 23 genera spread over 13.96 million hectares. According to the Union Ministry of Agriculture and Farmer Welfare, India's annual bamboo production is estimated at 3.23 million tonnes. However, despite all this, the country's share in the global bamboo trade and commerce is only 4 per cent. The NBM's key objective was to address issues relating to the development of the bamboo industry in the country, provide a new impetus and direction and enable the realisation of India's considerable potential in bamboo production. Multi-disciplinary and multi-dimensional in its approach, major interventions planned under it were to focus on research and development, plantation on forest and non-forest lands through Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) or Village Development Committee (VDCs) and to ensure the supply of quality planting materials by establishing centralised and kisan/mahila nurseries. NBM was started as a Centrally Sponsored Scheme in 2006-07. The Agriculture Finance Corporation (AFC) India Limited, a consultancy organisation, prepared the mid-term evaluation study report of NBM in 2012-13. For the study, the organisation covered 9 states and 18 districts out of 27 states that had implemented NBM during the 10th and 11th Plan period. The report made some positive revelations. To popularise various bamboo handicrafts and other products as well as bamboo food items like processed shoots, six retail outlets were created. The report further noted that a beginning had been made in using tissue cultured planting material in some states, with encouraging results. Bamboo Development Agencies (BDAs) in all states have done excellent work with regard to bamboo plantation on forest land through JFMCs and VDCs. Of course, there are some drawbrakes too. The plantation on non-forest land involving farmers and private land owners has not taken full momentum. Transfer of technology through training and demonstrations form an integral part of the NBM. But the quality of the training needs to be further upgraded to improve the practical knowledge and skills of the stakeholders. Earlier batanists considered as to how the complexity in a plant could be dissected out into individual cell and tissue types, so that these could be subjected to direct experimental control, free from the complex interactions occurring in the intact plant. Such an experimental tool which became available in the middle of the present century came to be known as 'tissue-culture'. Schwann's (1839) cell theory which proposed that each living cell of an organism, if provided with proper environment, would be capable of independent development gave birth to the concept of 'totipotency'. The theory of 'totipotency provides that it should be possible to reproduce an organism from anyone of its nucleated cells, since all the information needed to specify an organism is contained in its DNA. However Vochting inspired by Schwann's Cell theory performed some basic experiments during 1878, aimed at demonstrating the totipotency of the cells within certain limitations. However according to very early history of plant tissue culture, in Bio-technological science between 1902 and 1938 all attempts to induce the isolated cells into generating tissues masses by cell division failed.
Bio-technological Applications /approach useful in plant
Science: During the 60 years plant tissue culture techniques have been a research tool and of economic advantages in agriculture practice. Their role in supplementing the existing methods of agriculture, horticulture, forestry and plant breeding will be quiet evident from the following applications:
Name of Bio-technological approach/Applications
Clonal propagation is a method by which identical plants of superior specimens can be obtained within a short span of time or period. This application is principally based on the fact that every cell of an organism has all the information necessary to reproduce the whole organism if favourable environment are provided. The most commonly used tissues for culture are the apicalk-or the axillary -growing points. Morel (1960) on culturing the orchid meristems observed a large number or shoots which colud be rooted to form a complete plants. In this sequence, methods for obtaining plantlets from meristems were developed for several herbaceous plants (Murashige, 1974). This technique has now become an important tool for producing vegetatively a large number of genetically identical progeny from selected parental specimens.
Recovery of Disease-free Plants
Virus infection is a major problem with vegetatively-propagated species sugarcane, potato, etc. The recovery of pathogen free plants through shoot-tip culture is based on the assumption that pathogen concentration is not uniform throughout the infected plant. Morel and Martin (1952) were the first to obtain virus free dahlias (ornamental flowering plant) from infected plants.
Isolation of Haploids
Haploids were first successfully isolated from anther of Datura innoxia and cultured in-vitro (Guha and Maheshwari, 1966). Haploids callus cuilture was obtained from the cultured anthers of Solanum indicum but the shoot bud differtentiated from them were found to be diploid (David and Chinchanikar, 1980). Recently haploids plantlets have been obtained from Custard apple at NCL (Nair et al., 1983).
Isolation of Triploids
Triploids plants are usually seed-strile and non-importannt for plants where seeds are of commercial importance. AS compared to diploids the triploids Populus tremuloids has more desirable pulpwood characteristics. Triploidy can also be exploited for plants improvement. Economically important plants whose triploids are presently in commercial use4 include several varieties of apple, banana, sugarbeet, tea and watermelon (Johri and Bhojwani 1977)).
Isolation of Mutants
Cell culture technique has great potential in the isolation of Variants.Nickell and His goup (Nickel and Heiz, 1973) were the first to observe that many of the plants regenerated from a sugarcane cell suspension culture of a single parental clone differed both from the parent clone as also from each other. At the NCL, variants of sugarcane resistant to mosaic virus and turmeric plants of the of the variety 'Tekurpeta' containing about twice the curcumin concentration in the rhizome have been isolated and planted in the field (Nadgauda and Mascarenhas, 1986). (1981,1982,1983) Rao and Bapat Observations were recorded after 4 weeks when axillaries bud break occurred and shoots were proliferated. The proliferated shoots were excised from mother plant and cultured on MS medium supplemented with cytokinin in which concentration bud break and multiplication rate was more.
Commercial Production of Green Gold
References
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- Morel G, Martin C. Guerison de dehlias altinea d'une maladie virus Compet rendu de Academic des science. Paris. 1952;235:1324-1325.
- Guha S, Maheshwari SC. Cell division and differentiation of embryos from Datura (In-vitro). Nature. 1964;204:497.
- David SB, Chinchanikar GS. Anther culture of Solanum indicum L. In: Rao PS, Heble MR, editors. Plant Tissue culture and organ culture, Genetics Manipulation and Somatic Hybridization of Plant cells. Bhabha Atomic Research Centre; 1980:79-84.
- Nair S, Gupta PK, Mascarenhas AF. Haploids plant from in vitro anther culture of Annona squamosa. Plant cell Reports. 1983;2:198-200.
- Johri BM, Bhojwani SS. Triploid plants through endosperm culture. In: Rinert J, Bajaj YPS, editors. Applied and Fundamental Aspects of Plant Cell Tissue and Organ Culture. Springer-Verlag; 1977:398-410.
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