WWW.WA S .ORG • WORLD AQUACULTURE • MARCH 2022 57 ( C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 5 8 ) Benefits and Scope of in vitro Pearl Culture There are several advantages and benefits of in vitro pearl culture. In the usual pearl culture operations, bivalve molluscs are generally used. However, there are several other marine shellfishes, including those with spiral shells and other marine gastropods, such as queen conch and abalone, that can produce gem-quality pearls. Nuclei implantation and grafting are critical in achieving this but are often not possible. Tissue culture technology opens the way to produce pearls using the mantle of such shellfishes in in vitro culture. Open sea pearl culture faces several challenges such as pollution and natural disasters such as rough seas and cyclones. Sea-based culture installations require sheltered locations that are not commonly available everywhere, and security of oysters from predators and poachers is also a big challenge. Tissue culture operations have no such issues and production cost is also substantially lower. In open-sea pearl culture operations, there is no control over environmental or seasonal variations that affect the color and quality of pearls; but in in vitro culture, the epigenetic characteristics of the explant can be customized by supplementary micronutrients and minerals to achieve the desired result. In normal pearl culture operations, grafting of mantle tissues and nuclei implantation is done in the gonad region of the oysters. The gonad is not the natural place where mantle tissue is normally located. This causes a sudden immunological upheaval in the body of the oyster and a large number of oysters die because of the implantation process. In the tissue culture method, death of the animals is minimal. Most importantly, in one of the future objectives, granular cells proliferating in culture flasks of explants that produce aragonite crystals of pearl sacs can be stored in liquid nitrogen after cryopreservation. These cells can be cultured and proliferated anytime and anywhere as per requirement. By this method, a pearl culture cell bank of several species of shellfishes can be created. FIGURE 10. Mantle tissue inoculation. FIGURE 9. Cell proliferation network spreading from explants. FIGURE 12. Aragonite crystals form in the explant of P. margaritifera. FIGURE 11. Pearl formation in mantle with tissue culture process. FIGURE 13. Aragonite crystals formed in the explant.
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