Explant culture is a technique used to culture cells from a piece or pieces of tissue or organ removed from a plant or animal. The term "explant" can be applied to samples obtained from any part of the organism. The extraction process is extensively sterilized, and the culture can typically be used for two to three weeks. The major advantage of explant culture is the maintenance of near in vivo environment in the laboratory for a short duration of time, which allows investigators to perform experiments and easily visualize the impact of tests.

Explant culture can also refer to the culturing of the tissue pieces themselves, where cells are left in their surrounding extracellular matrix to more accurately mimic the in vivo environment, such as cartilage explant culture or blastocyst implant culture.

In tissue culture, an explant is a fragment of plant tissue obtained from any part of the plant and used as a starting material to grow a plant in tissue culture. Examples of explants are leaf sections, root fragments, shoot sections, and apical buds or seeds. Differentiated tissues such as stem and root sections undergo dedifferentiation to regenerate a whole plant in tissue culture. The differentiated cells form different plant organs, such as shoots, floral, or root tissues, in a process called differentiation.

Explant culture is used in establishing a variety of cell lines from different sources, including mammals, rodents, and avians. Because the cultures more closely resemble the in vivo situation of cells, this technique is useful in a wide variety of applications, including obtaining stem cells, cancer research, genetic engineering, vaccine production, drug screening, and toxicology testing. An explant can be obtained surgically using sterile equipment from mammals, rodents, or avian organs or tissues. After the explants are completely surrounded by the cells, they can be trypsinized and subcultured.

In summary, explant culture is a technique used to culture cells from a piece or pieces of tissue or organ removed from a plant or animal. In tissue culture, an explant is a fragment of plant tissue obtained from any part of the plant and used as a starting material to grow a plant in tissue culture.