Abstract

Plant tissue culture is a technique used for in vitro regeneration of plants. It relies on maintaining plant cells in aseptic conditions on a suitable nutrient medium. The culture can be sustained as a mass of undifferentiated cells for an extended period of time or regenerated into whole plants. Plant tissue culture techniques are also central to innovative areas of applied plant science, including plant biotechnology and agriculture. This review paper outlines the work done on Stevia rebaudiana, a herbaceous perennial plant of the Asteraceae family. It is gaining lot of importance for the production of diterpene glycosides which are non-nutritive, non-toxic, high-potency sweeteners, and may substitute sucrose as well as other synthetic sweeteners, being 300 times sweeter than sucrose. The taxonomy, botanical description of the plant, its distribution and uses, are discussed in this paper. Various tissue culture methods to get mass propagation of S. rebaudiana are reviewed.

Key words: Stevia rebaudiana, asteraceae, tissue culture.