Title : Plant Tissue Culture in Azerbaijan
Abstract:
In vitro plant propagation allows obtaining in several crops a higher reproduction rate than the classic vegetative propagation methods. Micropropagation enables vegetative production of large numbers of plantlets in a short period of time. It permits to reduce the surface of the area designated for producing the mother plants and for rooting the cuttings. Moreover, it produces in principle vigorous and healthy propagules. In addition, in vitro rooted clones could be more easily transported and shipped abroad due to its sterility. The most common method is axillary branching in which multiplication is achieved by forced outgrowth of axillary buds into new shoots. In Europe, the production of high-quality fruit varieties and rootstocks from commercial micropropagation accounts for over 70 million plants per year. France, Spain, Italy, and Greece are the main producers. Micropropagation, however, is highly labour oriented and, for this reason, outsourcing of in vitro plant production is shifting today to other European countries, having a lower production cost, such as Check Republic, Romania and Turkey. In Azerbaijan, plant tissue culture research is conducted mainly by the universities and also by governmental agricultural research institutes. Our company is the first in Azerbaijan, which is commercially related with plant tissue culture issues. Our plant tissue culture production laboratory has a very modern infrastructure. There are cutting room equipped with 10 sterilized laminar cabin, 3 incubation rooms with 4 million plant capacity and research and development unit performing various projects and the research findings generated by this laboratory every year reveals the quality of the work done in the plant tissue culture laboratory. Our staff has knowledge and experience to overcome the technical difficulties that may be encountered in tissue culture works from the sterilization stage to the rooting stage. The attention of our company is directed towards the modernization of laboratory equipment, the improvement of protocols of economically important species with low proliferation and/or rooting potential, the efficient conservation of shoot cultures in slow growth storage, aimed to increase the laboratory offer of species and cultivars. The development and rapid multiplication of new selected cultivars are required to meet the demand of consumers all year round.
