Cell culture methodologies have become standard procedures in most plant
laboratories. Full courses on the subject are taught as part of the curricula of
several programs in biological and agronomical sciences. However, the
apparent simplicity of cell culture technology should not lead to mistakenly
considering it as trivial. It would be very difficult to understand modern plant
biotechnology without in vitro cell cultures, and even today, the application of
recombinant DNA technology to important crops, such as peppers, is
hampered by the poor embryogenic or morphogenetic response of in vitro
cultured tissues.