Iranian Firm Produces Virus-Free Seeds Using Tissue Culture

Tissue culture is the cultivation of plant cells, tissues, or organs on specially formulated nutrient media. Under the right conditions, an entire plant can be regenerated from a single cell. 

Viruses are easily transmitted between mother potatoes and offspring, so tissue culture is the only way to maintain virus-free seeds.

Tissue culture approaches are widely used in crop plants for the purposes of micropropagation and regeneration of plants and developing genetically modified plants.

Babak Shabani-Sefid Dashti, the managing director of Alma Rooyesh Oxin Company, said that the company was established in 2020 and joined knowledge-based companies in 2021.

“The company then received a license from Seed and Plant Certification and Registration Institute,” he told ANA on the sidelines of Islamic Azad University's "second step of revolution" under the title of Asreh Omid Event.

The main activity of the company is the production of mini-tubers that give a higher yield than conventional plantations and are free from disease.

Shabani-Sefid Dashti, who is a Ph.D. undergraduate at the Islamic Azad University, said over the past years, farmers used to import potato seeds from European countries.

So, experts at Alma Rooyesh Oxin Company, who hold higher education degrees in biotechnology and agriculture, decide to produce the seeds inside the country.

The seeds are produced in four phases namely producing the culture medium and optimizing it in the laboratory space, cultivating healthy samples in the culture rooms, transferring the cultured glasses to the growth hall, and transferring the seedlings inside the glass to the environment compatible with the greenhouse and finally the greenhouse and producing seeds free from a virus. 

Over the past year, in order to realize a resilient and knowledge-based economy, the Vice Presidency for Science and Technology has implemented a series of activities to further develop the ecosystem of innovation and technology in the country.

In this line, a total of 400 trillion rials (nearly $1.4 billion) of financial services will be allocated to the innovation ecosystem of the country.

Asreh Omid Event was held in Tehran's Mosalla from May 29 to June 1, 2022.

It aimed to exhibit new achievements and products in the technological and innovation arenas in line with opening new windows towards strengthening the idea of creating ground for knowledge-based businesses at the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Azad University.

Some 3,000 knowledge-based companies, laboratories, research centers, and startups took part in Asreh Omid Event.

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