Cryopreservation, plant tissue

Finkle BJ, ZavolaME, Ulrich JM. Cryoprotective compounds in the viable freezing of plant tissues, in Cryopreservation of Plant Cells and Organs (Kartha KK, ed.), CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 1985, pp. 75-113. 

The collection of plant tissue is quite different from animal tissue collection. The discussion of collection of plant and animal tissue by Dessauer et al.2S is detailed and helpful. However, the recommendations for procedures unique to plant tissue collection are somewhat misleading and outdated, especially when tropical collections are involved. Plant tissue can now be collected and transported as either fresh tissue (leaves and/or shoot cuttings) or preserved tissue the latter either as cryopreserved tissue (liquid nitrogen or dry ice) or as dried tissue (air-dried, herbarium-dried, lyophilized, or chemically dried). Ambient-temperature liquid chemical preservation techniques (such as those routinely done for herbarium plant specimens in the tropics) so far have been ineffective in maintaining adequate yields of high-quality DNA.15 It should be stressed again that the manner of collecting plant tissue is dictated by several other factors what macromolecule (DNA, RNA, or isozymes) will be examined, what type of nucleic acid extraction method will be used (or, more impor-... 

There has been a demand for the development of cryopreservation methods for plant cells to avoid the troublesome maintenance of tissue cultures and the danger of microbial contamination. The most successful method for cryopreservation of plant cells reported so far has been the freezing of callus cultures or shoot tips [36, 37]. As the system here enables us to obtain sufficient initial shoot materials, its potential practical application to cryopreservation is in progress. In addition, the system of adventitious shoot formation might be a promising tool to investigate relationship between morphogenesis (shoot formation) and alkaloid biosynthesis. 

The cell and tissue culture of the major tropane alkaloid-producing species does not apparently offer any special problems. The regeneration of plantlets from callus and tissue cultures seems to be routine (286,307,309,323,325,332,350-352). Plants have also been regenerated from protoplasts of Atropa belladonna (353), Duboisia myoporoides (354), and Hyoscyamus muticus (355,356). Cryopreservation has been reported for Anisodus and Datura species (349,357). 

Baerheim Svendsen A, Verpoorte R (1983) Chromatography of alkaloids. Part A. Thin layer chromatography. J Chromatogr Lib, vol 23A. Elsevier, Amsterdam, 534 pp Benson EE, Hamill ID (1991) Cryopreservation and post freeze molecular and biosynthtic stability in transformed roots of Beta vulgaris and Nicotiana rustica. Plant Cell Tissue Organ Cult 24 163-173... 

Wang, Q., Tanne, E., Arav, A., Gafny, R., 2000. Cryopreservation of in vitro-grown shoot tips of grapevine by encapsulation-dehydration. Plant Cell, Tissue Organ Cult. 63, 41-46. 

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