Low cost tissue culture uses pressure cooker instead of autoclave, rain water instead of distilled water and jam jars instead of costly Pyrex or Borosil ware. A laboratory producing just a few hundred plantlets per week can be set up at less than Rs.6 hundredthousand.

The micropropagated plantlets are used only as mother plants, which are multiplied in a nursery, under exclusion of pests, and the second or third generation is sold to farmers. The cost per plant is reduced drastically in this way.