Applications of Plant Tissue Culture: New Insight into Plant Improvement Research Using Plant Tissue Culture and Plant Modification Techniques

Dear Colleagues,

The global population increase puts a huge pressure on the availability of food and water resources. Traditionally, plant breeders have played a key role in the genetic improvement of the quality and quantity of crops to feed the world’s growing population. Traditional plant breeding is, however, an ineffective method for sustained genetic improvement and has many limitations. The classical plant breeding procedure is time-consuming, relying on limited natural genetic resources, and labour-intensive. Plant biotechnology has emerged as a reliable set of tools that empowers plant breeders to use genes of beneficial traits from diverse sources and insert them into plant genomes for genetic modifications. In addition, plant tissue culture (PTC) is a core biotechnology for maintaining or growing plant cells, tissues or organs under aseptic conditions. There have been remarkable advances in PTC research on multiple fronts including the regulation of plant developmental processes in vitro, discoveries of biologically active compounds, gene transfer and production of secondary metabolites of medicinal significance. Most recently, the integration of PTC with novel techniques such as genome editing has opened a new window to improve the desirable traits in plants. Therefore, this Special Issue titled “New Insight into Plant Improvement Research using Plant Tissue Culture and Plant Modification Techniques” aims to attract contributions for new advances in PTC focusing on plant growth regulators, gene transformation, genome editing, molecular farming and other applications of plant culture research in vitro. We welcome the submission of original research papers, reviews and novel in vitro protocols including, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Micropropagation;
• Cell totipotency;
• Phytochemical production by in vitro cultures;
• Somaclonal variation;
• Somatic embryogenesis;
• De novo organogenesis;
• Synthetic seeds;
• Virus-free plants;
• Cell suspension culture;
• Hairy root culture;
• Cellular reprogramming;
• Callus formation;
• Plant transformation;
• Molecular plant breeding;
• Genetics;
• Genome editing;
• DNA (transgene)-free editing;
• Base/prime editing;
• HDR-based editing;
• The CRISPR/dCas9 system;
• Off-target effects;
• Transcription factors;
• Rewiring of plant defence genes in vitro;
• Bioreactors;
• Secondary metabolites in plant tissue cultures;
• Elicitors;
• Plant defence mechanisms;
• Biotic and abiotic stress in vitro culture;
• Plant growth regulators;
• Quality improvement;
• Phytoremediation.

Dr. David W. M. Leung
Dr. Rambod Abiri
Guest Editors

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