Plant tissue culture, also called micropropagation, is a practice used to propagate plants under sterile conditions, often to produce clones of a plant. The technique consists of taking a piece of a plant, such as a stem tip, node, meristem, embryo, or even a seed, and placing it in a sterile, nutrient medium where it multiplies. The formulation of the growth medium is changed depending upon whether you are trying to get the plant to produce undifferentiated callus tissue, multiply the number of plantlets, grow roots, or multiply embryos for 'artificial seed'. Plant tissue culture helps in the production of exact copies of plants that produce particularly good flowers, fruits, or have other desirable traits. It enables to quickly produce mature plants and facilitates the production of multiples of plants in the absence of seeds or necessary pollinators to produce seeds. The production of plants in sterile containers allows them to be moved with greatly reduced chances of transmitting diseases, pests, and pathogens. Further, it is possible to produce plants from seeds that otherwise have very low chances of germinating and growing, i.e. Orchids and nepenthes.
