Milestones in Plant Tissue Culture Development

Early Foundations and Key Milestones in Plant Tissue Culture

The science of plant tissue culture originates from the discovery of the cell, followed by the postulation of cell theory. In 1838, Schleiden and Schwann proposed that the cell is the basic structural unit of all living organisms. They envisioned that a cell is capable of autonomy and, therefore, it should be possible for each cell, if given the right environment, to regenerate into a whole plant. Based on this premise, in 1902, German physiologist Gottlieb Haberlandt for the first time attempted to culture isolated single palisade cells from leaves in Knop’s salt solution enriched with sucrose. The cells remained alive for up to one month, increased in size, accumulated starch, but failed to divide. Though unsuccessful, he laid down the foundation of tissue culture technology, for which he is regarded as the Father of Plant Tissue Culture. Following this, several landmark discoveries in tissue culture occurred, summarized as follows:

1. 1902 – Haberlandt proposed the concept of in vitro cell culture.
2. 1904 – Hannig cultured embryos from several cruciferous species.
3. 1922 – Kotte and Robbins successfully cultured root and stem tips, respectively.
4. 1926 – Went discovered the first plant growth hormone: Indole Acetic Acid (IAA).
5. 1934 – White introduced Vitamin B as a growth supplement in tissue culture media for tomato root tips.
6. 1939 – Gautheret, White, and Nobécourt established endless proliferation of callus cultures.
7. 1941 – Overbeek was the first to add coconut milk for cell division in Datura.
8. 1946 – Ball raised whole plants of Lupinus by shoot tip culture.
9. 1954 – Muir was the first to break callus tissues into single cells.
10. 1955 – Skoog and Miller discovered kinetin as a cell division hormone.
11. 1957 – Skoog and Miller presented the concept of hormonal control (auxin:cytokinin ratio) of organ formation.
12. 1959 – Reinert and Steward regenerated embryos from callus clumps and cell suspension of carrot (Daucus carota).
13. 1960 – Cocking was the first to isolate protoplasts by enzymatic degradation of the cell wall.
14. 1960 – Bergmann filtered cell suspensions and isolated single cells by plating.
15. 1960 – Kanta and Maheshwari developed the test-tube fertilization technique.
16. 1962 – Murashige and Skoog developed the MS medium with a higher salt concentration.
17. 1964 – Guha and Maheshwari produced the first haploid plants from pollen grains of Datura (anther culture).
18. 1966 – Steward demonstrated totipotency by regenerating carrot plants from single cells of carrot.
19. 1970 – Power et al. successfully achieved protoplast fusion.
20. 1971 – Takebe et al. regenerated the first plants from protoplasts.
21. 1972 – Carlson produced the first interspecific hybrid of Nicotiana tabacum by protoplast fusion.
22. 1974 – Reinhard introduced biotransformation in plant tissue cultures.
23. 1977 – Chilton et al. successfully integrated Ti plasmid DNA from Agrobacterium tumefaciens into plants.
24. 1978 – Melchers et al. carried out somatic hybridization of tomato and potato, resulting in the 'pomato'.
25. 1981 – Larkin and Scowcroft introduced the term somaclonal variation.
26. 1983 – Pelletier et al. conducted intergeneric cytoplasmic hybridization in radish and grape.
27. 1984 – Horsch et al. developed transgenic tobacco by transformation with Agrobacterium.
28. 1987 – Klein et al. developed the biolistic gene transfer method for plant transformation.
29. 2005 – The rice genome was sequenced under the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project.