Advances in pesticide metabolite identification through the use of plant tissue cultures

Plant tissue cultures are powerful tools for metabolism studies. Culture conditions can be selected which mimic conditions of whole plants or conditions can be employed to mass-produce selected metabolites such as aglycons or conjugates. Culture variables that affect metabolism are medium composition, age of tissue cultures, concentration of test chemical, and the source of plant tissue. The type of culture, such as suspension cultures, callus tissue cultures, differentiated tissue or organ cultures will also influence the type of metabolites obtained. Ease of standardizing conditions makes tissue culture suitable to comparatively examine metabolism in different plant species and strains and in different plant parts such as tissues derived from leaves and roots. Recent advances with plant tissue cultures involve studies of the mechanism of action or selectivity of growth regulators and herbicides, and the use of resistant strains to investigate mechanisms of biological detoxification.