The propagation of a plant by using a plant part or a single cell or group of cells in a suitable sterile media under very controlled and hygienic conditions is called "Tissue Culture". It is a process used to propagate plants often to produce clones. Different techniques in plant tissue culture may offer certain advantages over traditional methods of propagation, including:

• The production of true to the mother type plants that have particularly good desirable traits.
• To produce mature plants in short duration.
• The production of multiples of plants in the absence of enough planting material, like seeds or bulbs.
• The regeneration of whole plants from plant cells that have been genetically modified.
• The production of plants in sterile containers that allows them to be moved with greatly reduced chances of transmitting diseases, pests, and pathogens.
• The production of plants from seeds that otherwise have very low chances of germinating and growing, i.e.: orchids and nepenthes.
• To save, preserve and multiply threatened and endangered plant species.
• To clean particular plant of viral and other infections and to quickly multiply these plants as 'cleaned stock' for horticulture and agriculture.
• To be able to produce large amounts of secondary metabolites using cell cultures eg useful enzymes, tannins etc.

 Plant tissue culture relies on the fact that many plant cells have the ability to regenerate a whole new plant (totipotency). Single cells, plant cells without cell walls (protoplasts), seeds and its various parts, anthers, pistil, pieces of leaves, stem sections or (less commonly) roots can often be used to generate a new plant on culture media given the required nutrients, plant hormones and culture conditions. Plant tissue culture is used widely in plant science; it also has a number of commercial applications. Micropropagation is widely used by plant breeders in the area of  forestry, floriculture and  agriculture.

·         To mass propagate plants.

·         To cross distantly related plants to produce novel hybrids.

·         For large-scale growth of plant cells in liquid culture inside bioreactors as a source of secondary products, like recombinant proteins used as biopharmaceuticals.

·         To produce monogamous lines ie. Haploids and polyploids for pure line breeding and Trasnsgenic plants.