Myanmar stands as the country, which produces most of the world’s teak. Myanmar teak is the most popular in the world teak market and can be regarded as a valuable asset for Myanmar. Today, the government is extending teak plantations, by the teak-tissue culture in natural way, which might guarantee to put vast areas of plantations with teak.
Research on teak-tissue culture has been launched and the work has been successfully implemented at central forest Development training and Education Centre in Hmawbi, under the Ministry of Forestry. Teak plantlets obtained by means of tissue culture have been successfully grown since July 2002.
Tissue culture is keeping the tissue, which has living cells to imitate the task, that of a plant, in a glass test-tube containing nourishment liquid in order to get a new healthy plant congruent to its mother’s gene.
The very first stage of tissue culture is the collection of the reproductive parts of a plant; explants collection and the sterilization of the plant tissue, step by step. Then, keeping and growing the tissue in a glass test-tube, which is called inoculation or induction, and putting the tube in a culture-room. Where lighting as well as temperature can be controlled.
After the shoot formation has sprouted up, it has to be cut-off from its node and multiplied. If you have the required amount of shoot, you have to try for root formation by using nourishment liquid. Then, you need to train the rooted plantlets, to endure the environment, which is called acclimatization and finally you can take them out, and plant them in soil.
The advantages you have from tissue-culture are that, you can carry out seed multiplication from plants that are hard to multiply by seeds, you can get plants, which have the same gene as the mothers, a large number of plantlets can be grown from a piece of tissue in a small amount of space and strong healthy disease tree plantlets can be obtained.
Now that, teak tissue culture has succeeded and Myanmar can grow extended amount of teak plantations, it will surely provide much benefits for Myanmar in the future.
