Primary cell culture refers to the culture established directly from the tissue. This type of culture contains mostly heterogeneous cells and these cells are similar to their parents. It represents the initial stage of cell culture maintenance.

For the preparation of primary cultures, a tissue is dissected in sterile conditions. This is followed by mechanical or enzymatic disaggregation. The tissue can simply be chopped and the pieces attached to a dish for the cells to grow.

One method involves attaching tissue pieces to a dish where cells grow out from the fragment. The fragment of tissue used in this process is called an explant. This explant may be transferred to a fresh dish to initiate the culture.

Alternatively, primary cultures are developed by disaggregating tissue with the help of enzymes such as trypsin or collagenase. The resulting cell suspension is allowed to adhere and spread out on the substrate.

Finally, in primary culture, cells may grow as adherent cultures or may remain in suspension. These cultures are essential for studying cell behavior and serve as the source for generating secondary cell lines.