Review on Plant Tissue Culture: A Source of Phyto-Pharmaceuticals

Abstract

Since ancient times, plants have been used in the form of medicines in various traditional systems like Ayurveda, Unani, Homeopathy, Chinese and Siddha. Plants have been a potential source of natural products from various plant parts like root, stem, leaf and bark. Plants usually produce primary and secondary metabolites and use of plant tissue culture for production of secondary metabolites is quite common.The plant cells offer a novel route for the synthesis of a wide array of secondary metabolites, many of which are used as valuable drugs. Some of these are difficult to synthesize by conventional methods. The morphology and chemical totipotency of plant cells enables any cell of plant for the synthesis of compounds produced by the intact plant. The secondary metabolites on plant cell cultures can be significantly enhanced by elicitation, precursor feeding, media modification, hairy root culture, immobilization of plant cells, biotransformation or by manipulating culture conditions.