Synseeds Techniques and its Impact on the Future of Plant Tissue Culture

Ahmed M Hassanein

Abstract

Tissue culture techniques are considered as novel plant biotechnology tools in the past decades because their high potential to establish specific experimental conditions, multiplication in mass production, magnify or control the genetic variation and facilitating the variant selection. Problems of in vitro obtained plant materials retard the investment in micropropagation fields because final products are represented by non-acclimatized plantlets, which require specific managements until final field delivery. To counteract the problems of in vitro techniques, synthetic seed technology should be used especially when seedless plants such as banana or plants with unviable seeds have been subjecting for plant improvement. To create artificial seeds, artificial endosperm around plant materials (somatic embryos, shoot tips or nodal segment) was established by dipping plant materials in gel matrix (MS with 4% sodium alginate). Then, the alginate-covered plant materials were dropped in complexing agent (75 mM CaCl2) for 30 minutes and washed in MS medium. The obtained artificial seeds (synseeds) could be stored in refrigerator for several weeks up to several months with high conversion especially when they stored submerged in MS liquid medium supplemented with low sucrose concentration and growth regulators.