Question

Suggest and describe a technique through which a healthy sugarcane plant can be obtained from virus infected sugarcane plant.

Hint:

Use meristem culture: the shoot tip is virus free, so culture it on a sterile medium with auxin and cytokinin to get healthy plantlets.

Answer 1

Step 1: Suggest the technique:
The technique is meristem culture, a type of plant tissue culture (micropropagation).
It works because the apical and axillary meristems are free of virus, even in an infected plant. The virus has not yet reached them through the vascular tissue.

Step 2: Describe the procedure:
1. A very small piece of the apical or axillary meristem (explant) is cut from the infected plant.
2. It is surface sterilised and placed on a sterile nutrient medium with the growth hormones auxin and cytokinin.
3. The explant forms a callus, which divides and then differentiates into shoots and roots.

Step 3: Finish the steps:
4. The plantlets are checked to be virus free.
5. They are hardened and transferred to pots and then to the field.
The plants are genetically identical to the parent and are free of virus.

Final Answer:
Healthy sugarcane is obtained by meristem culture: grow the virus-free meristem on a sterile nutrient medium and raise plantlets from it.