Read the paragraph and answer the questions:
Plant tissue culture is based on the special property of plant cells to generate a whole plant, called totipotency. The plant part used in tissue culture is called explant. The nutrient medium provides a carbon sources such as sucrose. inorganic salts, vitamins, amino acids and growth regulators like auxins cytokinins etc. Propagation of thousands of plants in very short duration through tissue culture is called micropropagation. Each of these plants will be genetically identical to the original plant i.e., they are somaclones. Another application of tissue culture is to recover virus free plants, from the infected ones. The apical or axillary meristem, which is free of virus, is removed and cultured in-vitro to obtain virus-free plants. Scientists have succeeded in culturing meristems of sugarcane, banana, potato etc. Scientists have isolated single cells from plants and after digesting their cell walls, the protoplasts were isolated. Protoplasts from two different varieties of plants - each having a desirable character - are fused to get hybrid protoplasts. These hybrid protoplasts are called somatic hybrids and the process is called somatic hybridisation. Somatic hybrids are further grown to form a new plant. Protoplast of tomato is fused with that of potato, to form new hybrid plants called Pomato. Pomato unfortunately did not have all the desired combination of the two plants.
Pomato is developed by _______ technique .
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 4
The correct answer is Option (4) → Somatic hybridization
Option (1) Micropropagation — Incorrect. Micropropagation makes thousands of identical plants (somaclones) of one plant through tissue culture. It does not combine two plants.
Option (2) Mutation breeding — Incorrect. Mutation breeding creates new variation with chemicals or radiation.
Option (3) Biofortification — Incorrect. Biofortification breeds crops with more vitamins, minerals or protein.
Option (4) Somatic hybridization — Correct. The passage says a protoplast of tomato was fused with that of potato, and the hybrid grew into the pomato.
Note: The passage is taken from NCERT. NTA has put lines of the NCERT text together to make it. Most CUET (UG) questions come straight from NCERT, so study the book line by line, including figures and their titles.