Plant tissue culture as potential option in developing climate resilient spices

Abstract

According to, Food and Drugs Administration spices are ‘Aromatic vegetable substance, in the whole, broken, or ground form, whose significant function in food is seasoning rather than nutrition’. Spices have gained a significant position in modern life due to its economic importance and its cuisine, food and medicinal value. In modern era of civilization, global warming and climate changes are becoming a major threat for all living organisms of the globe including spices. Despite the tremendous progress and mechanization in the agriculture sector, it is also experiencing the multidimensional negative impact of climate changes. The natural resources of spices are declining day by day due to deforestation and industrialization. Besides, low productivity, seasonal dependency, high susceptible to diseases and poor genetic variation are major problems for spices cultivation. So production and supply of quality products is becoming a great challenge. In addition, there is a need to develop climate resilient crops in order to face the consequences of global warming in near future. Plant Tissue Culture technology is a proven techniques for generating quality planting materials and developing new elite germplasms of several crops. The regeneration of planting materials by this technique depends on major factors of plant tissue culture methods are type of explants, culture media and culture condition. Modification of media components and using suitable explants under stress conditions, several stress-tolerant/resistant crops have been regenerated through this technique. This chapter focuses to enumerate applicability and scope in the improvement of spices with response to climatic change. Major aspects of plant tissue culture for spices improvement are mainly restricted to somatic embryogenesis, protoplast fusion (i.e. cybrid) while disease free plants can be regenerated through micropropagation. Anther/pollen culture was exclusively reported for haploid/double haploid plant production. Somaclonal variations regenerated through plant tissue culture exhibited the scope to induce variation under laboratory condition. Moreover, secondary metabolites enhancement particularly in spices with pharmaceutical importance and long term conservation of rare germplasms are the areas of intrusion. Since traditional breeding is laborious and time taking process, plant tissue culture may serve as chief tool or as an inseparable add-on tool to recombinant DNA technonology.