The status of temporary immersion system (TIS) technology for plant micropropagation

Abstract

The development of temporary immersion systems (TIS) for in vitro culture, in the late 1990s heralded new and semi-automated means of micropropagation of plants for agricultural and conservation purposes. By 2005, various systems had been developed and tested and their benefits were proven with a variety of commercially-important crops such as sugar-cane, coffee, banana, and yam. Progress in the field and the adoption of these systems in subsequent years has been reviewed. Improvements on previously-developed TIS protocols for economically-important species have been reported, and this continues to attest to their benefits when compared with protocols that employ semi-solid or liquid media. Though TIS protocols have recently been developed for other species, this list is limited. On the other hand, there appears to be an increasingly great interest in TIS technology for the production of secondary metabolites and for physiological studies.

Key words: Bioreactor, in vitro culture, temporary immersion systems (TIS), micropropagation.