Agar sold for plant tissue culture is usually purified to a higher degree than that agar sold for bacteriological media. This is needed because the impurities in some agar preparations can harm plant explants in culture. Sometimes the company may even test the "plant" agar to make sure it does not contain inhibitors that would affect successful plant tissue culture. Because of the extra purification, plant agar is usually more expensive. These days, many of the bacteriological agar preparations are very pure and can be used for plant tissue culture. It just depends on the specific company, the type of agar, and the actual batch produced.
Back in the olden days when I was doing a lot plant tissue culture, we found that we could purchase bacteriological agar and rinse it a few times in distilled H2O, and then it could be used for plant tissue culture.
The best way for you to know if the bacteriological agar will work for you is to test it. Use duplicate explants on both plant and bacteriological agar plates, and see if you get the same survival, regeneration, etc. rates.
Thanks much for your reply. Therefore the bacteriological agar rinsed with distilled water may be used for plant tissue culture! This is awesome
But I have a little trouble because for what’s bacteriological agar powder, I do not understand how to rinse it with distilled water, because once in contact it is totally dissolved!
Bacteriological agar will not dissolve in distilled water. It has to be heated to boiling first, and mixed well. Rinsing the agar is not easy. You need to add water to a known amount of agar, mix well and let it settle. Then carefully remove as much liquid as you can, and repeat a few times. You may only be able to remove half of the water at a time. When removing the water, you will probably get some of the fine particles that have not settled. Therefore your final concentration of agar will not be as high as you expect. Also, you cannot get rid of all the distilled water, so you have to take that into account when making your plates.
Importantly, this may not work. It depends on the brand and batch of agar. It could be that there are no inhibitors in your agar to begin with, or if there are inhibitors, they may not be removed by rinsing. I used this method years ago and it worked for me, but I was using tobacco, which will grow on almost anything.
It is important that you test this by comparing plant cells on regular plant tissue culture agar and some on your rinsed agar. If it works well enough, you win!