Research Details

Mariano Marcos State University (MMSU) has previously developed a protocol for the production of disease-free planting materials based on meristem tissue culture technology (Atis et al., 2006). While this approach has been confirmed to be able to eliminate viruses, there are still bottlenecks that need to be addressed. This study aims to address these by enabling the culture of a single explant into significantly more plantlets, and in effect, be able to generate more clean planting materials out of a single virus-free culture. This will prospectively be made possible through callus tissue culture. Additionally, a callus tissue culture protocol for garlic also enables other biotechnological research such as targeted mutagenesis (gene-editing), and production of valuable metabolites in callus cell suspensions for use as pharmaceuticals (Mostafa et al., 2020).

Product – 1 protocol employing callus tissue culture for production of clean garlic planting materials
Publication – at least 1 journal publication
People services – farmers, stakeholders, researchers