Biotechnological Approaches towards improvement of medicinal plants

Abstract

Herbs are now in great demand in both developed and developing countries because of their proven efficacy and little or no reported side effects. Secondary metabolites, the active principles expensive to produce and accumulate are usually biosynthesized in smaller quantities. This has resulted in ruthless exploitation of medicinally important plants creating imbalance in supply and demand. An alternative technology could be the application of in vitro culture of desirable medicinal plants to increase the plantation propagules and enhance the yield of specific drug components. Successful micropropagation protocols for various medicinal plants have been developed and their conservation has also become feasible through synthetic seeds and cryopreservation technologies. Besides other techniques, genetic engineering of medicinal plants using Agrobacterium-mediated transformation has many advantages that include fast growth and high level of stable production of secondary metabolites making them commercially and economically feasible. Genetic fidelity of tissue culture raised plants can be ascertained by using molecular markers. © 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc. All rights reserved.