Propounding of the cell as a basic structural unit of life which is potentially totipotent and the definitive experimental demonstration of totipotency culminated in focusing wide applications of plant tissue, cell and protoplast cultures in the broad areas of plant propagation, virus elimination leading to disease free plants, plant improvement, and the in vitro production of secondary metabolites of plants. In addition, the techniques help to resolve fundamental questions in developmental biology. This paper focuses on in vitro approaches to crop improvement. In addition to a broad historic perspective, implications of plant cell cultures in inducing genetic variations, underlying mechanisms of induction and its utility to the plant breeders is discussed. The pre-twentieth century era defined the expanse, rhythm, morphology and anatomy of life forms, whereas Mendel laid the foundation for the twentieth century research into inheritance patterns to be looked into qualitatively and quantitatively within life forms as factors later known as genes. History of in vitro technology only addresses to issues of how actually DNA and as a consequence the genes can be physically manipulated. In vitro approaches have facilitated the mobility of genomes and genes across genera and kingdoms but the laws of their inheritance over sexual generations remain the same.