History

Abstract

The history of in vitro culture is illustrated in Fig. 3.1. In 1838 Schwann and Schleiden (cf. Gautheret, 1983) put forward the so-called totipotency theory, which states that cells are autonomic, and in principle, are capable of regenerating to give a complete plant. Their theory was in fact the foundation of plant cell and tissue culture. The first attempts, by Haberlandt in 1902, at plant tissue culture techniques failed. However, between 1907 and 1909, Harrison, Burrows and Carrel succeeded in culturing animal and human tissue in vitro. Although earlier workers had achieved in vitro culture of orchid seeds (seedlings), embryos and plant organs, in 1939 Nobécourt, Gautheret and White (cf. Street, 1973) succeeded in obtaining the first real plant tissue culture. After the 2nd World War development in this field was especially rapid and numerous results of importance for agriculture, forestry and horticulture have been published (Pierik, 1979; Bhojwani et al., 1986).