The need and prospects of tissue culture in the practice of forestry

The deman for planting materials in the forest management programme is estimated to be more than 10 million planting materials a year. This is mainly for various programmes like forest plantations, reforestation, enrichment planting of logged-over forest, opened spaces, roadside planting programme, encroached areas and devastated areas. Most of the planting materials such as seedsa d wildings are obtained from natural forest stands. In the logged-over forest, particularly in the hills, the regeneration is dependant on the establishment of natural seedlings but as most of the trees, especially the commercially important dipterocarps, flower and fruit irregularly and at variable intervals, the seeds produced are inadequate and, furthermore, can easily be destroyed by mammals, birds and insects. Consequently, a new paradigm for the propagation of plant materials must be pursued and established in forestry. Biotechnology programme through tissue culture offers possible mass propagation and conservation of quality planting materials. It also provides a unique opportunity to produce superior cultivars unsurpassed by any other known methods. Tissue culture is a technique where small tissue pieces or organs are cultured aseptically on a nutrient medium to develop a new plant. By modifying the nutrient media and through exposure to synthetic plant growth regulators., shoots and roots can be routinely induced and multiplied under aseptic conditions on explants obtained from selected mother trees. To date, there have been stidies on tissue culture of some tropical tree species like Meranti temak nipis, Merawan siput jantan, Kapur and Ramin. Most of the studies have given emphasis on the basic aspects of micropropagation such as the responses of tissue from fifferent plant parts to plan growth regulators and nutrient medium. Some of the plantlets have been established in the greenhouse for outplanting purposes. This paper will discuss the need and prospects of applying tissue culture techniques for mass propagation, germplasm conservation, genetic transformation and virus elimination of selected and superior quality planting stock in forestry.