Woody plants provide many challenges to the tissue culturist. Although there are many excellent tissue culture books and manuals available, these are generally strongly biased towards herbacious crops. Consequently, they often do not pay sufficient attention to the problems that specifically apply to in vitro culture of tree species. Culture of the latter often poses problems which are either absent or of lesser significance when culturing herbacious species.
When trees in the field are used as explant source, the problems can be especially severe. For example, the...