Creating artificial / synthetic seeds from plant cultures?

Question

Does anyone here have any research material on this? I have found a few things that are interesting:

http://www.kitchenculturekit.com/kit.htm (kitchen culture kit)

http://www.plant.uoguelph.ca/research/embryo/synseeds.htm (how-to on culture & preservation however no information related to artificial seed encapsulation, etc)

http://www.sp.edu.sg/schools/cls/bioline_08.htm (another article on artificial seed production)

I am interested in learning more about creating artificial seeds (with encapsulation) for storage rather than dry cultures.

Anyone here have any useful information?

Answer 1

I am working in the field of Plant Tissue Culture for last several years and I did some experiments on encapsulation of somatic embryos and shoot buds that are formed during culturing of tissues on nutrient media. These encapsulated shoot buds or somatic embryos can be stored for some period under sterile conditions and then can be used to regenerate the plants from them. For this purpose sodium alginate and calcium chloride is used  to form the beads. The method needs to be standardised for different plant species.