Morphological Transformation of Plant Cells in vitro and Its Effect on Plant Growth

Enhancement of cell growth in suspension cultures is urgently needed in plant cell culture engineering. This study investigates the relationship between morphological transformation and cell growth in callus and suspension cultures of saffron cells belonging to the cell line C96 induced from Crocus sativus L. In the suspension culture, an unbalanced osmotic pressure between the intracell and extracell regions induced a large morphological transformation which affected normal division of the saffron cells. An increase in osmotic pressure caused by the addition of sucrose inhibits the vacuolation and shrinkage of cytoplasm in the cells. As the sucrose concentration increases, the total amount of accumulated biomass also increases. Besides the sucrose concentration, increased ionic strength and inoculation ratio also help restrain to a large extent the vacuolation and shrinkage of the cytoplasm in the suspended cells, which results in increased biomass. The conditions for optimal biomass are: Murashige and Skoog's (MS) medium with 40 g/L sucrose and 60% (v/v) inoculation ratio.