1. BIOTECHNOLOGICAL PERTINENCE IN PRODUCTION OF MEDICINAL PLANTS by SEWETA SRIVASTAVA AND SUMANT BINDAL

Abstract

Medicinal plants are the most important source of life saving drugs for the majority of the world's population. In-vitro regeneration holds tremendous potential for the production of high-quality plant-based medicine. The biotechnological tools are important to select, multiply, improve, analyze and conserve the critical genotypes of medicinal plants. Plant cell culture systems represent a potential renewable source of valuable medicinal compounds, flavours, fragrances and colorants, which cannot be produced by microbial cells or chemical synthesis. This review article discusses the role of biotechnology in production of medicinal plants because in vitro propagation of medicinal plants with enriched bioactive principles and cell culture methodologies for selective metabolite production is found to be highly useful for commercial production of medicinally important compounds.

KEYWORDS: Biotechnology, Medicinal Plants, Tissue culture, Secondary metabolites.