Plants are a major source of medicines, flavors, fragrances, and various
pharmaceutical and industrial products. Biotechnology is being put to
the service for mass clonal propagation of plants, and to produce impor-
tant secondary products in cell cultures. In some cases cell cultures
ac- cumulate higher amounts of products than the intact plant cells in
situ, and such cultures can be stored through immobilization and
cryopreser- vation. An in vitro-produced anti-inflammatory drug,
shikonin, has been commercialized, and the recent observations on the
increased pro- duction of atropine and hyoscyamine by Agrobacterium
rhizogenes- mediated transformed "hairy roots" have encouraged the
acceptance of such biotechnologies by the pharmaceutical industry. In an
earlier volume, Medicinal and Aromatic Plants I, various aspects of
in-vitro culture of cells, bioreactors, micropropagation, im-
mobilization, and cryopreservation were discussed. The present volume
concerns the application of these biotechnologies to 29 genera of
medicinal and aromatic plants. It deals with the distribution, economic
importance, conventional propagation, micro propagation, review of
tissue culture studies, and the in-vitro production of important
medicinal and pharmaceutical compounds in various species of Angelica,
Anisodus, Basel/a, Bupleurum, Camellia, Co ix, Coptis, Cryp- tomeria,
Datura, Dioscorea, Foeniculum, Gardenia, Geigeria, Heimia, Humulus,
Hyoscyamus, Jasminum, Macleaya, Mucuna, Nicotiana, Pimpinel/a,
Rauwolfia, Ruta, Salvia, So/anum, Saponaria, Stevia, Tabernaemontana,
and Zingiber. The potential role of biotechnology for industrial
production is discussed. Biotechnology enables the production and
isolation of products of higher purity and also opens the possibility of
making desired molecular alterations in products.
