When trying to salvage a highly valuable crop variety that has been...

Even if a plant is systemically infected with a pathogen such as a virus, the apical and axillary meristems remain generally free of the infection.

This is primarily because the rate of cell division in the meristematic region is much faster than the rate of multiplication and systemic spread of the pathogen. Additionally, the vascular tissue, which often transports pathogens, is not fully differentiated or connected in the extreme apical regions.

Therefore, to successfully recover healthy, disease-free plants from an infected crop variety, the apical and axillary meristems must be excised and used as explants for in vitro tissue culture.

This standard agricultural biotechnology technique is known as meristem culture.