**Water Stress Hinders** *In Vitro* **Regeneration of Plants**

Mustafa Yildiz, Emine Selcen Darcin and Ramazan Beyaz

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/64664

#### **Abstract**

Plants could be propagated vegetatively via small parts of living tissue called as 'explant' on growth mediums under sterile conditions. Plant cell has the ability of forming whole fertile plant which is called 'totipotency', under *in vitro* culture conditions. High-frequency shoot regeneration is one of the main aims of *in vitro* culture and it is a prerequisite to guarantee the success in transformation studies and in clonal propagation of plants. It is well known that growth regulators in culture medium and the type of explant affect *in vitro* regeneration frequency significantly. In this chapter, the importance of tissue water content on *in vitro* culture response is discussed. Increasing water content of the explant before culture initiation gives rise to increased regeneration capacity. On the other hand, increasing the tissue's osmotic pressure enables the explant to intake water, all solutes and growth regulators from the growth medium which results in high-frequency shoot regeneration. However, tissues with lack of water are usually not successful in regenerating a satisfactory amount of shoots. The effect of water deficiency on explant's regeneration capacity and the methods to overcome this problem are discussed in this chapter.

**Keywords:** Plant *in vitro* culture, regeneration capacity, water, stress, growth
