843 - Quality Enhancement of Plant Production through Tissue Culture

By propagation through tissue culture (in vitro), new plants can be propagated with far greater speed than through traditional methods. Additionally, micropropagation produces high quality plants that may be free from viral and bacterial diseases and that have an increased cropping capacity. In vitro culture is therefore a cornerstone for a sustainable crop-based agricultural industry across Europe.
This Action focused on the development of potentially faster techniques such as somatic embryogenesis, propagation in liquid medium or automated culture propagation/ handling systems.

The Action started with making an inventory of European Plant Tissue Culture Laboratories. Many publications in scientific journals followed and the most important publication was a COST book on “Liquid Culture Systems for in vitro Plant Propagation”.

Very succesfull was a training course on Plant Flow Cytometry organised by COST 843, which turned out to be the first ever European Post-Graduate course on this subject. This training course was organised together with a German company Partec GmbH, who lent during the course several flow cytometers for the demonstrations, permitting the participants to use the equipment with their own plant material. The three lecturers of the course are finalising a Manuel on Plant Flow Cytometry which will be published.
COST 843 was also the basis for many research proposals to the EU-INCO programme and FAO-IAEA.

Another clear example of the result of collaborations initiated or continued thanks to Action 843 has been the publication of a number of joint articles in peer-reviewed journals by a number of experts participating. Interestingly, some of these articles are the outcome of work undertaken during STSMs that were thereafter pursued in the participating laboratories.