Advanced Plant Biotechnology I

Plant Tissue Culture: PTC lab, media preparation and handling, cell and plant culture, sterile techniques, totipotency, various plant tissue culture media and their composition. Micropropagation: organogenesis, somatic embryogenesis, axillary bud proliferation.                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Organ Culture:  Anther culture, mature and immature zygotic embryo culture, ovary culture, somaclonal and gametoclonal variations, triploid production, production of virus free plants. Tissue culture in germplasm conservation: Synthetic seeds, Cryopreservation.                                                                                                                                    

Greenhouse Hardening Unit:  Greenhouse Construction, types of greenhouses, environmental control inside a greenhouse. Soilless media for propagating and growing nursery plants. Media components: Sand, peat moss, cocopeat, vermiculite, pumice, perlite synthetic plastic aggregate and composts. Preplanting treatments of soil and soil mixes: heat treatments, fumigation and chemicals

Secondary metabolite production in culture: Biotransformation, factors affecting production of secondary metabolites, production of important drugs in culture- taxol, ginseng, morphine, codeine, vinblastine and vincristine, types of bioreactors (stirred tank, air lift, membrane type, immobilized cell bioreactors).

Recombinant DNA technology: Cutting and joining DNA molecules, cloning vectors: plasmids, cosmids, bacteriophage vectors, phagemids, YAC, shuttle vectors, expression vectors, gene cloning  direct DNA transfer: particle bombardment, electroporation, liposome mediated transformation, macroinjection. Agrobacterium mediated transformation of plants: in planta gene transfer