Mazandaran’s Medicinal Plants’ Culture Tissue Entering Commercialization Stage

Head of Tissue Culture Laboratory of Genetic and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of Sari Agricultural Science and Natural Resources University said, “By completing the last stages of obtaining a permit, the ornamental and medicinal plants tissue culture of this university has reached the commercialization stage, therefore, the products will soon enter the market.”

In an interview with an IRNA reporter, Roghieh Asgharzadeh added, “For commercialization and supply of cultivated tissue culture to the market, it is required to have a permit from Ministry of Agriculture Jihad, and such a permit has been issued for the medicinal and ornamental plants of this university.”

Tissue culture means producing one living being from one or several cells, which may not even be visible by the naked eye.

In this method, instead of cutting plants and sowing seeds, which were common methods used in the past to propagate trees and plants, fragment of the desired plant for propagation is sterilized using special disinfectants, and then transferred to a growth medium, which contains all that is necessary for the growth of a plant as well as suitable plant growth regulators.

Those plants which have been tissue cultured do not have any differences from the main plant. They are exactly similar to the parent plant, and known as clone.

Referring to the capacities and facilities of Mazandaran University of Agriculture for producing tissue cultures, Asgharzadeh continued, “A greenhouse without soil is one of the facilities and infrastructures necessary for tissue culture, which we have in the university. This is where the research stages take place until commercialization is reached.”

She indicated that one of the advantages of tissue culture is the acceleration in growth as well as mass production in the most limited of space, “The high demand of ornamental and medicinal plants in the most countries of the world, has drawn people’s attention towards these kind of plants. Most of them are propagated by vegetative reproduction (by leaves and roots) as well as sexual propagation (by sowing seeds).

Asgharzadeh referred to vegetative and sexual reproduction as time-consuming, “Since this method is slow, the production of the seedling is only usable in smaller quantities.”

She noted that Tissue Culture Laboratory of Genetic and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute of Sari Agricultural Science and Natural Resources University has been active for two decades, then added, “Some of this universities tissue cultures such as stevia, Rosa damascena and succulent have also been commercialized in the previous years.”