Plant Tissue Culture Technology offers great promise for the production of quality planting material on account of disease free and true to type plants produced through micropropagation techniques. The need for a certification programme for the tissue culture plants is imperative since inadvertent micropropagation of virus infected plants will not only result in its poor performance, but also in undesirable spread of viruses wherever such plants are grown. Also, failure to use prescribed standard protocols will result in variations in the plants produced. The most deleterious variants in tissue culture raised plants are those that effect yield, genetic fidelity and carry infection of viruses, and other fastidious pathogens, which are difficult to diagnose. This is an area of great concern, and requires a well-structured system be put in place to provide support to the tissue culture industry for the commercialization of tested virus free and high quality planting material.
Ministry of Agriculture has vide Gazette of India Notification dated 10th March 2006 notified that “In exercise of the powers conferred under section 8 of the seeds Act, 1966 (54 of 1966), the Central Government hereby authorizes Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India to act as Certification Agency for the purpose for certification of the tissue culture-raised propagules up to laboratory level and to regulate its genetic fidelity as prescribed by them”. Accordingly a National Certification System for Tissue Culture Plants (NCS-TCP) has been developed.
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