Tissue culture is an essential tool for:

Disease management and crop improvement

(c) Disease management and crop improvement

Explanation: Tissue culture is an essential tool used for disease management and crop improvement, among other applications. It allows scientists and researchers to manipulate plant cells and tissues under sterile conditions to achieve various objectives related to agriculture and plant biotechnology.

Some of the key applications of tissue culture include:

1. Disease Management: Tissue culture can be used to produce disease-free plants from infected ones. By culturing the meristems (apical and axillary) of infected plants, researchers can obtain virus-free plants that are healthy and free from pathogens.
2. Micro-Propagation: Tissue culture enables the mass production of genetically identical plants (clones) from a single explant. This technique is particularly useful for propagating plants with desirable traits, including disease resistance.
3. Crop Improvement: Through tissue culture, new plant varieties with improved traits can be developed. This includes enhancing characteristics such as yield, nutritional value, stress tolerance, and resistance to pests and diseases.
4. Genetic Engineering: While tissue culture is not solely limited to producing genetically modified crops, it is an important step in the process of introducing novel traits into plants through genetic engineering. In this context, tissue culture is used to regenerate plants from transformed cells or tissues that carry the desired genes.

Overall, tissue culture is a versatile and powerful tool that plays a crucial role in various aspects of agriculture and plant biotechnology, including disease management and crop improvement.