Current State and Development of Micro Propagation of Selected High Value Crops in Ethiopia: A Review

Rapid and mass propagation of clean and quality seedlings in horticulture industry becomes a priority for many countries to supply increasing demand of planting materials. Attempt of exploiting the benefit of heterosis from F1 hybrid and overcoming the shortage of planting materials associated with it needs proper intervention. Tissue culture techniques offer disease free, uniform, and large amount of planting materials. The technique is playing a significant role in advancing agriculture in many developing countries in which the current production has to be doubled by 2050. Specially, countries like Ethiopia in which population growth is very high and food insecurity persist, the need for improved production and productivity through the use of modern technologies become apparent. To feed the tremendously growing population, utilization of biotechnology tools such as micro-propagation in agriculture is helpful. Currently, in Ethiopia, somehow there is a fertile ground to exploit the possible advantage which may be acquired from biotechnology as in the case of sugarcane, banana, pineapple etc. micropropagation that boosted the production. This review is therefore to bold out the development of mass-propagation of selected crops and present the current status of protocol optimization of high value horticultural and spice crops. In the meantime, the development of private tissue culture laboratories makes an encouraging advancement where it has to be largely consolidated and highly linked with innovating laboratories to take over the responsibility of multiplying improved varieties. Thus, it can be concluded that despite the development of biotechnology remains at its early stage, promising results were obtained from micro propagation work and if adequate attention given to rapid development of protocol for mass propagation of high value cash crops, there exist untapped potential of biotechnology in Ethiopia.