Description
Abstract
Hilly areas form a significant area of India and most of it spreads in the Himalayan region extending from North West to North to North East. The geography and tough topography of these regions makes it difficult to grow the cereal and crops in as significant quantities as in plains. Thus, crops suited for these areas are the fruiting, vegetable and flowering crops known as Horticultural crops. Some of fruiting crops have been grown in these areas to an extent but not as frequently as it should be. To make these areas more prosperous economically, there is a need of cultivating more of such crops with novel cultivation methods.
One of the important technique that can help in economic revival of Hilly areas is Plant Tissue Culture that can not only help in providing planting material in large numbers but also help in developing novel varieties that can sustain in the harsh climate of hills. Beside this it also helps to produce disease free and high quality horticultural crops. This can not only help in raising the livelihood systems efficiency in harsh climatic conditions but will also help in developing sustainable horticultural practices.
Introduction
Culturing plants under aseptic conditions in-vitro using a small plant part to develop true-to-type plantlets is termed as Plant Tissue culture. Such cultures may include the genetically modified plants or the plants required in large numbers (Widolm, 2001). A small tissue of plants is used for such purpose exploiting the totipotency of plants, where a small of plant can be used for propagating a complete plant (Yadav et al., 2012). These tissue parts are taken from the plant the one chose to grow and such plant is called the mother plant. This is frequently used technique now-a-days for plant commercial production and in plant research (Bhoite and Palashiker, 2014). The small plant sections that are used to generate whole new plants are termed as explants and this whole process in done under aseptic environment.
The whole process of Tissue Culture works on the fact that one need to provide suitable growth environment for the particular plant on order to propagate it (George et al., 2007). Using the growth regulators i.e. phytohormones in appropriate concentrations and providing the suitable growth environment artificially the Tissue Culture technique not only can produce plants irrespective of their season but also in a large numbers and that too true-to-type (Hasnain, 2022). Plantlets grown by such method passes through different stages of growth, Callus are produced from leaves and other parts while in some cases one can directly use Apical meristem to directly produce shoots.
The plant tissue producing callus are made to produce shoot by using different hormonal concentrations (Ikeuchi et al., 2013). As the microshoots emerged in-vitro on the medium and such shoots are transferred to another media containing hormonal combinations suitable for root development. Then these plantlets are then put in soil and grown under standard conditions.
Thus, tissue culture techniques among plants, provide a solution for the availability of planting material to the farmers that can be grown in-vitro irrespective of season, makes it easier to produce disease free plants, quality of crop can be maintained.
Hills and Horticulture
The undulated terrains of hilly regions are generally fragmented and separated by rocky structures poses difficulty for agricultural activities. Though, these lands are fertile but highly diverse climatic conditions along the hills makes them unsuitable growing long seasonal crops (Chimmwal et al., 2019). The hilly areas not only have fertile land but also high and fairly wide-spread rainfall, it makes these areas suitable for short seasonal crops like vegetables, flowers, medicinal plants and fruits. Thus, these areas are suitable for all kinds of Horticultural crops including sub-tropical, tropical and temperate (Tuteja, 2015). The uneven landscape of this region features fragile ecosystem leading to negligible scope of modernization and hence most of agriculture in these areas is based of terrace cultivation (Sati, 2014). The agrarian farming in this region is low on economic return and hence focus should be on the crops that could give high returns and the hill basins are suitable for such crops mostly fruiting crops.
Tea cultivation practices including seasonal vegetables along with fruiting crops can help in strengthening the economy of such hilly areas. The horticultural practices in the Himalayan region extending from Jammu and Kashmir to Assam Himalaya are centuries old but it is not on commercial level (Janakiram and Reddy, 2016). The varying altitudes along the river basins in these areas results to diverse climatic conditions from low lying (sub-tropical) areas to highly elevated (Temperate and alpine) regions (Sati, 2015). With a diverse fruit crop cultivation these hilly basins are also abode of a huge chunk of medicinal plants, wild berries and flowering plants including the widely appreciated orchids. Among the fruiting plants these hilly basin thrives guava, mango, range of citrus fruits and reach up to plum, chestnut, walnut and apple etc. beside orchids, flowering vegetation include tulips, gerbera, chrysanthemum etc. The tuberous crops like potato, ginger, garlic and allium, plantation crops like Tea, cocoa and rubber can also do wonders in these areas, it only needs proper planning of such lands and use of climate. While transportation facilities are one of the main reason for the low economic return it can be negotiated for a while if the crop quality grown is best. Thus an important factor is the availability of high quality planting material with a high survival and success rate.
In the emerging world Tissue culture techniques look like a clear solution to the plantation material availability issue limiting not only to it but such practices can be helpful in production of new varieties specific to these regions also (Hasnain, 2022). Tissue Culture can provide a large amount of planting material to farmers just before beginning the season in large numbers so that survival rate can be negotiated. It can also counter the problem of low land to produce ration by introducing the high density and highly abiotic stress resistant rootstocks for fruiting crops. Such practices are already being followed and doing wonders in Europe.
Thus, introduction of tissue culture lab and making them frequent through government channels is requisite for these hilly region now. Tissue culture has the potential to uplift the economy of these undulated but fertile lands.
Important Crops for Hilly regions:
the undulated terrains lead to diverse climatic conditions that culminates to variety of agro-climatic zones in the Hilly regions. Such conditions ask for variety of crops to be cultivated rather than one, two some three crops only. Thus, looking at the situations some of the important crops are Tea (Assam and Tamil Nadu), Coffee (Tamil Nadu), Rubber (Kerala and Tamil Nadu), Knagra tea (Himachal Pradesh), Apple (J&K and Himachal Pradesh, some parts of Uttarakhand), Naga Mirch (Nagaland) etc.
Fruits
Nuts, Berries, Pome fruits and Stone fruits are important types of fruits that can be easy to grow in Hilly areas. Some of the important fruits are Apple, Pear, Almond, Chest-nut, Pecan-nut, Strawberry and Rasp-berry etc. Most of these are grown in many of the hilly areas with traditional cultivation practices that has become insignificant in the current world looking at the demand. Thus, tissue culture can help by introducing the Rootstocks as well as High Density varieties plants in a larger quantity in shorter time span. Tissue culture can also help in developing disease resistant varieties further revolutionizing the Hill Horticulture.
Vegetable Crops
Bulb crops, Root Crops, Cole Crops, Beans and Solanaceous fruits are important vegetables crops that can be easily grown in Hilly areas. Important among these are Cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, potato, onion, reddish, peas and egg plants. Okra and sweet potato are the other that can be looked forward. Tissue culture can help by providing significant numbers of planting material at the start of planting season as availability of planting material is a problem in these crops, on the other hand the material produced by tissue culture can be trusted in case of quality and safety from diseases.
Flowering Crops
This is an areas that can be further improved and explored as hilly areas have huge potential for a diversity of flowering crops. Saffron is one such crop that has been grown in some areas or now. Now it’s a time to look forward for cultivation of Orchids as they have a huge diversity. Tissue Culture will play the most important role in this case as most of these flowering crops as not easy to grow and hence providing well grown disease free and hardened plants will help the farmers immensely.
Ways Forward
It has been a common phenomenon that most of the times farmers tend fix themselves to a crop just because of monetary security or lack of awareness. Thus, it becomes imperative for the state departments to look forward for awareness campaigns as well as to develop easily applicable techniques with more positive results.
Tissue culture has shown promises to deliver as important technique that can be further pushed forward towards more results using the Hydroponic technique. On the other hand, these hilly areas are known to be house of medicinally valuable plants most of which grows in wild have not been cultivated till now and some of them have been extensively exploited. Thus, tissue culture can help in developing cultivation strategies for the unexplored herbs as well as conserving those MAP’s that are threatened.
Conclusion
Agriculture in Hilly areas has not been an easy task just because of the topographical features these regions that lead to diversity of climate and hence the focus shall be on crops that can withstand grow well in such changing conditions. The traditional methods that are employed by the locals are now less rewarding and requires more efforts. On the other hand, there are many horticultural crops which can grow and give high results in these areas that are not grown. Thus, the primary focus should be on introducing economically valuable crops and following the modern methods for planting material production and high rewarding variety production. Tissue culture has grown immensely in the recent years as an important technique in providing the reliable, high quality, disease free planting material as well as for developing novel varieties of better quality
References:
Pawan Singh Rana, Kiran Bisht, and Pooja Kumari
Department of Biotechnology and Forensic Science, Graphic Era University, Dehradun, India
SRF, Plant Tissue Culture Laboratory Department of Horticulture and Food Processing, Uttarkashi, Govt of Uttarakhand
Patanjali Organic Research Institute, Haridwar
Hilly areas form a significant area of India and most of it spreads in the Himalayan region extending from North West to North to North East. The geography and tough topography of these regions makes it difficult to grow the cereal and crops in as significant quantities as in plains. Thus, crops suited for these areas are the fruiting, vegetable and flowering crops known as Horticultural crops. Some of fruiting crops have been grown in these areas to an extent but not as frequently as it should be. To make these areas more prosperous economically, there is a need of cultivating more of such crops with novel cultivation methods.
One of the important technique that can help in economic revival of Hilly areas is Plant Tissue Culture that can not only help in providing planting material in large numbers but also help in developing novel varieties that can sustain in the harsh climate of hills. Beside this it also helps to produce disease free and high quality horticultural crops. This can not only help in raising the livelihood systems efficiency in harsh climatic conditions but will also help in developing sustainable horticultural practices.
Introduction
Culturing plants under aseptic conditions in-vitro using a small plant part to develop true-to-type plantlets is termed as Plant Tissue culture. Such cultures may include the genetically modified plants or the plants required in large numbers (Widolm, 2001). A small tissue of plants is used for such purpose exploiting the totipotency of plants, where a small of plant can be used for propagating a complete plant (Yadav et al., 2012). These tissue parts are taken from the plant the one chose to grow and such plant is called the mother plant. This is frequently used technique now-a-days for plant commercial production and in plant research (Bhoite and Palashiker, 2014). The small plant sections that are used to generate whole new plants are termed as explants and this whole process in done under aseptic environment.
The whole process of Tissue Culture works on the fact that one need to provide suitable growth environment for the particular plant on order to propagate it (George et al., 2007). Using the growth regulators i.e. phytohormones in appropriate concentrations and providing the suitable growth environment artificially the Tissue Culture technique not only can produce plants irrespective of their season but also in a large numbers and that too true-to-type (Hasnain, 2022). Plantlets grown by such method passes through different stages of growth, Callus are produced from leaves and other parts while in some cases one can directly use Apical meristem to directly produce shoots.
The plant tissue producing callus are made to produce shoot by using different hormonal concentrations (Ikeuchi et al., 2013). As the microshoots emerged in-vitro on the medium and such shoots are transferred to another media containing hormonal combinations suitable for root development. Then these plantlets are then put in soil and grown under standard conditions.
Thus, tissue culture techniques among plants, provide a solution for the availability of planting material to the farmers that can be grown in-vitro irrespective of season, makes it easier to produce disease free plants, quality of crop can be maintained.
Hills and Horticulture
The undulated terrains of hilly regions are generally fragmented and separated by rocky structures poses difficulty for agricultural activities. Though, these lands are fertile but highly diverse climatic conditions along the hills makes them unsuitable growing long seasonal crops (Chimmwal et al., 2019). The hilly areas not only have fertile land but also high and fairly wide-spread rainfall, it makes these areas suitable for short seasonal crops like vegetables, flowers, medicinal plants and fruits. Thus, these areas are suitable for all kinds of Horticultural crops including sub-tropical, tropical and temperate (Tuteja, 2015). The uneven landscape of this region features fragile ecosystem leading to negligible scope of modernization and hence most of agriculture in these areas is based of terrace cultivation (Sati, 2014). The agrarian farming in this region is low on economic return and hence focus should be on the crops that could give high returns and the hill basins are suitable for such crops mostly fruiting crops.
Tea cultivation practices including seasonal vegetables along with fruiting crops can help in strengthening the economy of such hilly areas. The horticultural practices in the Himalayan region extending from Jammu and Kashmir to Assam Himalaya are centuries old but it is not on commercial level (Janakiram and Reddy, 2016). The varying altitudes along the river basins in these areas results to diverse climatic conditions from low lying (sub-tropical) areas to highly elevated (Temperate and alpine) regions (Sati, 2015). With a diverse fruit crop cultivation these hilly basins are also abode of a huge chunk of medicinal plants, wild berries and flowering plants including the widely appreciated orchids. Among the fruiting plants these hilly basin thrives guava, mango, range of citrus fruits and reach up to plum, chestnut, walnut and apple etc. beside orchids, flowering vegetation include tulips, gerbera, chrysanthemum etc. The tuberous crops like potato, ginger, garlic and allium, plantation crops like Tea, cocoa and rubber can also do wonders in these areas, it only needs proper planning of such lands and use of climate. While transportation facilities are one of the main reason for the low economic return it can be negotiated for a while if the crop quality grown is best. Thus an important factor is the availability of high quality planting material with a high survival and success rate.
In the emerging world Tissue culture techniques look like a clear solution to the plantation material availability issue limiting not only to it but such practices can be helpful in production of new varieties specific to these regions also (Hasnain, 2022). Tissue Culture can provide a large amount of planting material to farmers just before beginning the season in large numbers so that survival rate can be negotiated. It can also counter the problem of low land to produce ration by introducing the high density and highly abiotic stress resistant rootstocks for fruiting crops. Such practices are already being followed and doing wonders in Europe.
Thus, introduction of tissue culture lab and making them frequent through government channels is requisite for these hilly region now. Tissue culture has the potential to uplift the economy of these undulated but fertile lands.
Important Crops for Hilly regions:
the undulated terrains lead to diverse climatic conditions that culminates to variety of agro-climatic zones in the Hilly regions. Such conditions ask for variety of crops to be cultivated rather than one, two some three crops only. Thus, looking at the situations some of the important crops are Tea (Assam and Tamil Nadu), Coffee (Tamil Nadu), Rubber (Kerala and Tamil Nadu), Knagra tea (Himachal Pradesh), Apple (J&K and Himachal Pradesh, some parts of Uttarakhand), Naga Mirch (Nagaland) etc.
Fruits
Nuts, Berries, Pome fruits and Stone fruits are important types of fruits that can be easy to grow in Hilly areas. Some of the important fruits are Apple, Pear, Almond, Chest-nut, Pecan-nut, Strawberry and Rasp-berry etc. Most of these are grown in many of the hilly areas with traditional cultivation practices that has become insignificant in the current world looking at the demand. Thus, tissue culture can help by introducing the Rootstocks as well as High Density varieties plants in a larger quantity in shorter time span. Tissue culture can also help in developing disease resistant varieties further revolutionizing the Hill Horticulture.
Vegetable Crops
Bulb crops, Root Crops, Cole Crops, Beans and Solanaceous fruits are important vegetables crops that can be easily grown in Hilly areas. Important among these are Cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, potato, onion, reddish, peas and egg plants. Okra and sweet potato are the other that can be looked forward. Tissue culture can help by providing significant numbers of planting material at the start of planting season as availability of planting material is a problem in these crops, on the other hand the material produced by tissue culture can be trusted in case of quality and safety from diseases.
Flowering Crops
This is an areas that can be further improved and explored as hilly areas have huge potential for a diversity of flowering crops. Saffron is one such crop that has been grown in some areas or now. Now it’s a time to look forward for cultivation of Orchids as they have a huge diversity. Tissue Culture will play the most important role in this case as most of these flowering crops as not easy to grow and hence providing well grown disease free and hardened plants will help the farmers immensely.
Ways Forward
It has been a common phenomenon that most of the times farmers tend fix themselves to a crop just because of monetary security or lack of awareness. Thus, it becomes imperative for the state departments to look forward for awareness campaigns as well as to develop easily applicable techniques with more positive results.
Tissue culture has shown promises to deliver as important technique that can be further pushed forward towards more results using the Hydroponic technique. On the other hand, these hilly areas are known to be house of medicinally valuable plants most of which grows in wild have not been cultivated till now and some of them have been extensively exploited. Thus, tissue culture can help in developing cultivation strategies for the unexplored herbs as well as conserving those MAP’s that are threatened.
Conclusion
Agriculture in Hilly areas has not been an easy task just because of the topographical features these regions that lead to diversity of climate and hence the focus shall be on crops that can withstand grow well in such changing conditions. The traditional methods that are employed by the locals are now less rewarding and requires more efforts. On the other hand, there are many horticultural crops which can grow and give high results in these areas that are not grown. Thus, the primary focus should be on introducing economically valuable crops and following the modern methods for planting material production and high rewarding variety production. Tissue culture has grown immensely in the recent years as an important technique in providing the reliable, high quality, disease free planting material as well as for developing novel varieties of better quality
References:
- Bhoite, HA, & Palshikar, GS (2014) Plant tissue culture: A review. World journal of pharmaceutical sciences, 565-572.
- Chhimwal, M, Pandey, RK, & Srivastava, RK (2019) Status of agriculture and horticulture farming in the hill state of India-Uttarakhand. Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry, 8(4), 1626-1631.
- George, EF, Hall, MA, & De Klerk, GJ (Eds.). (2007) Plant propagation by tissue culture: volume 1. the background (Vol. 1). Springer Science & Business Media.
- Hasnain, A, Naqvi, SAH, Ayesha, SI, Khalid, F, Ellahi, M, Iqbal, S, ... & Abdelhamid, M (2022) Plants in vitro propagation with its applications in food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetic industries; current scenario and future approaches. Frontiers in Plant Science, 13, 1009395.
- Ikeuchi, M, Sugimoto, K, & Iwase, A (2013) Plant callus: mechanisms of induction and repression. The plant cell, 25(9), 3159-3173.
- Janakiram, T, & Reddy, VR (2016) Hill horticulture-status, problems and strategies. Journal of Hill Agriculture, 7(1), 1-11.
- Sati, VP (2014) Towards sustainable livelihoods and ecosystems in mountain regions (pp. 137-150). Springer International Publishing.
- Sati, VP (2015) Sustainable Horticultural Farming in the Mountain Regions-A Case for the Pindar Basin of Central Himalaya.
- Tuteja, U (2015) Agriculture profile of Uttarakhand. Agricultural Economics Research Centre University of Delhi. http://gbpihedenvis.nic.in; Economic survey, Uttarakhand, 2017-18 (Deptt. of Planning, GOI)
- Widholm, JM (2001) Plant genetic modification technologies. In Genetically modified organisms in agriculture (pp. 275-282). Academic Press.
- Yadav, K, Singh, N, & Verma, S (2012) Plant tissue culture: a biotechnological tool for solving the problem of propagation of multipurpose endangered medicinal plants in India. Journal of Agricultural Technology, 8(1), 305-318.
Pawan Singh Rana, Kiran Bisht, and Pooja Kumari
Department of Biotechnology and Forensic Science, Graphic Era University, Dehradun, India
SRF, Plant Tissue Culture Laboratory Department of Horticulture and Food Processing, Uttarkashi, Govt of Uttarakhand
Patanjali Organic Research Institute, Haridwar
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