How have rice and tobacco plants been grown from pollen-derived callus?

Created from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

tissue culture Tissue culture often requires sterile working conditions and thus is typically performed in a laminar flow cabinet (or tissue culture hood), which circulates filtered air to reduce the risk of culture contamination.

In the context of tissue culture, mature rice and tobacco plants have been successfully obtained from callus formed directly from pollen.1

This process involves a specialized technique where the callus is grown and subsequently subjected to procedures designed to induce organ differentiation. Because these plants are derived from pollen—which contains only half the genetic material of the parent plant—the resulting mature plants possess half the normal chromosome number. While this method is used extensively in research, it is not currently considered a practical or standard method for commercial plant propagation.1