Plant cell cloning and culture products.

Biotechnological developments in the use of plant cells as sources of biochemicals have now brought several applications within commercial range. Plant propagation has developed faster commercially, but now requires similar biotechnology to enable the automated production of large numbers of plants at low cost. Although some of the enabling technology has been developed for pregerminated seeds this has not been coupled to production of plantlets in bioreactors. Our present lack of knowledge of how to control gene expression in plant cells, which stems from our ignorance of the organization and regulation of the plant genome, is a critical factor limiting all applications of plant cell cultures.