Micropropagation. Cereal plants being grown in test tubes from a tissue culture. The jelly in the bottom of the test tubes is a sterile soil- substitute containing the nutrients needed by the growing plants. These plants are clones grown from tiny fragments or single cells of a parent" plant in a process called micropropagation. Carefully controlled conditions cause the fragments to develop into embryos, which then produce roots and shoots like normal seedlings. The technique allows mass agricultural production of genetically identical plants and is an effective way of propagating any genes introduced into the parent plant."