An overview of tissue culture techniques for crop improvement in mulberry

Mulberry is an economic plant grown for cultivating silk producing insect Bombyx mori worldwide. It is propagated through stem cuttings mainly but the success of stem cuttings is dependent on many factors viz., origin of genotype, age of stem, rooting ability of plant, physiological condition of plant and environmental conditions. The biotechnological approaches have been facilitated widely to improve mulberry crop production. Tissue culture techniques multiply and regenerate novel plants from genetically engineered cells in culture under aseptic conditions in a short period of time. Micropropagation, organogenesis and somatic embryogenesis are widely used tissue culture methods. Tissue culture methods are applicable in mulberry germplasm conservation, induction of tiploidy and tetraploidy, screening for stress tolerance, genetic transformation. Tissue culture techniques are convenient and cost-effective to improve the quality and quantity mulberry leaf production. This review presents a description of tissue culture techniques and their useful genetic transformation for the mulberry crop improvement to sustain silk industry.