Scientists identify plant traits for crop improvements using in vitro cultures

Humans have been making use of plants for as long as there have been humans and plants. The actual cultivation of plants for food and other products began with the Neolithic Revolution some 12,000 years ago and has been evolving ever since. Despite all of our technological advances, however, screening plants for potential products is still primarily done the old fashioned way – growing intact plants in nature, botanical gardens or greenhouses then subjecting them to tests. Conventional wisdom has held this to be the only way it can be done as in vitro cultures lack the ability to accumulate specific compounds that can be found in intact plants. As often proves to be the case, conventional wisdom appears to be wrong.

Tamas Torok, a microbiologist with Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division, served as the principal investigator for an international collaboration that demonstrated in vitro biodiversity is sufficiently broad enough to be used for natural plant product . In a study conducted at the Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering, in Kiev, Ukraine, the collaboration carried out reproducible screening and genomic analysis for insecticidal and fungicidal activity on 1,200 of the more than 2,000 plant cell lines the Institute maintains in culture. The screening of these cell lines, which represent diverse geographic regions, climates and soil and growing conditions, revealed a wealth of natural compounds with potential applications for crop improvement and protection.

The results of this study have been reported in Industrial Biotechnology in a paper titled “Screening Plant Biodiversity In Vitro for New Natural Products.”

Read full, original article: Screening plants for potential natural products

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