Cloning Plants & Tissue Culture Lesson | GCSE Biology Edexcel Higher Triple

Cloning Plants & Tissue Culture

This lesson covers:

Two techniques used to clone plants:
Cuttings
Micropropagation (also known as tissue culture)

Cuttings

Cuttings can be used to quickly and cheaply clone a desirable plant:

Diagram showing the process of taking a cutting from a plant, including cutting off a small part ideally a growing shoot or branch.

Illustration showing a plant cutting placed in soil with nutrients and hormones.

Illustration showing a plant cutting growing into a clone of the original plant.

Diagram showing the process of cloning a plant using cuttings.

Micropropagation (using tissue cultures)

An alternative to using cuttings is to use cell cultures to clone a plant (this is also known as 'micropropagation'). Although it requires more expertise than using cuttings, it can produce many more clones.

Diagram showing the process of plant cloning using micropropagation, including explants, calluses, plantlets, and adult plants.

Find a plant with desirable characteristics that you want to clone.
Take very small pieces of plant tissue (called explants) from the tips of stems.
Sterilise the explants to remove any microorganisms.
Place the explants in a nutrient medium (agar) and let them grow into small masses of cells called calluses. The nutrient medium should also contain growth hormones.
Transfer the calluses to soil where they can grow into plantlets (basically baby plants).
The plantlets can then be transferred to their own pots to develop into genetically identical adult plants.

What is an explant?

A fertilised egg cell

A piece of DNA that codes for a protein

A small piece of plant that can develop into a clone

Give two benefits of cloning via cuttings rather than micropropagation.

Plants can be cloned by micropropagation.

Suggest how the tissue samples are removed and transferred to the agar medium.

Plants can be cloned by micropropagation. Nutrients are added to the agar medium to help plant growth.

Give two nutrients that should be added to the agar medium. Explain how each nutrient helps plant growth.

Plants can be cloned by micropropagation.

Suggest three precautions/conditions needed to ensure healthy growth of the small plants.

Some species of flowering plant are rare due to deforestation. To solve this problem scientists hope to use micropropagation to produce clones of these plants which can then be reintroduced into the wild.

Describe the process of micropropagation to clone plants.