Articles
IN VITRO PLANT AND ORGAN CULTURE OF MEDICINAL AND NEUTRICEUTICAL SPECIES IN LABORATORY AND INDUSTRIAL SCALES
Article number
756_10
Pages
95 – 102
Language
English
Abstract
Medicinal, nutraceutical and culinary herbs are receiving scientific attention for their health promoting properties.
Many are ferile or wild species that often exist as long-lived perennials that are heterozygous out-crossers in heterogeneous populations.
Sustainable delivery of plant materials without degrading native populations requires modern propagation technologies that may include in vitro conservation banks, cryopreservation, or slow growth tissue cultures.
Tissue culture techniques have been developed for such a diverse group of plants that these methods are assumed to be universally applicable.
Commercial laboratories can supply starter-plants for field culture.
Such laboratories can also generate uniform plant organs for direct production of active compounds.
Micropropagation allows for the creation and dissemination of large numbers of nursery plants without spreading pathogens across continents.
Also, micropropagation of seedling-derived clones accelerates the screening and selection process.
Environmental control systems (greenhouse, growth chambers or in vitro laboratory) can advance cultivation of slow growing perennial species.
Misidentified plant material, biotic and abiotic contaminants, and loss of living specimens from prior studies confound accurate scientific investigations.
A properly managed in vitro plant laboratory would eliminate much uncertainty in development of standardized medicinal and nutraceutical plant products.
Costs are the major impediment to laboratory-based systems.
Liquid bioreactor systems originally designed as microbial fermentors have been modified for industrial scale plant organ culture.
Simpler and less expensive liquid systems developed largely for ornamental plants have been adapted to in vitro production of medicinal plants at a more moderate degree of scale-up.
Greater economy, higher plant quality, and process control are achieved with liquid systems.
Specific examples of in vitro cultivation applied to phtyochemical plant development will illustrate these technologies.
Many are ferile or wild species that often exist as long-lived perennials that are heterozygous out-crossers in heterogeneous populations.
Sustainable delivery of plant materials without degrading native populations requires modern propagation technologies that may include in vitro conservation banks, cryopreservation, or slow growth tissue cultures.
Tissue culture techniques have been developed for such a diverse group of plants that these methods are assumed to be universally applicable.
Commercial laboratories can supply starter-plants for field culture.
Such laboratories can also generate uniform plant organs for direct production of active compounds.
Micropropagation allows for the creation and dissemination of large numbers of nursery plants without spreading pathogens across continents.
Also, micropropagation of seedling-derived clones accelerates the screening and selection process.
Environmental control systems (greenhouse, growth chambers or in vitro laboratory) can advance cultivation of slow growing perennial species.
Misidentified plant material, biotic and abiotic contaminants, and loss of living specimens from prior studies confound accurate scientific investigations.
A properly managed in vitro plant laboratory would eliminate much uncertainty in development of standardized medicinal and nutraceutical plant products.
Costs are the major impediment to laboratory-based systems.
Liquid bioreactor systems originally designed as microbial fermentors have been modified for industrial scale plant organ culture.
Simpler and less expensive liquid systems developed largely for ornamental plants have been adapted to in vitro production of medicinal plants at a more moderate degree of scale-up.
Greater economy, higher plant quality, and process control are achieved with liquid systems.
Specific examples of in vitro cultivation applied to phtyochemical plant development will illustrate these technologies.
Authors
M.M. Cousins, J.W. Adelberg
Keywords
biomass, phytochemicals, micropropagation, upregulation, commercialization
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