Using Micropropagation to Develop Medicinal Plants into Crops

Abstract

Medicinal plants are still the major source of therapies for several illnesses and only part of the herbal products originates from cultivated biomass. Wild harvests represent the major supply for therapies, and such practices threaten species diversity as well as the quality and safety of the final products. This work intends to show the relevance of developing medicinal plants into crops and the use of micropropagation as technique to mass produce high-demand biomass, thus solving the supply issues of therapeutic natural substances. Herein, the review includes examples of in vitro procedures and their role in the crop development of pharmaceuticals, phytomedicinals, and functional foods. Additionally, it describes the production of high-yielding genotypes, uniform clones from highly heterozygous plants, and the identification of elite phenotypes using bioassays as a selection tool. Finally, we explore the significance of micropropagation techniques for the following: a) pharmaceutical crops for production of small therapeutic molecules (STM), b) phytomedicinal crops for production of standardized therapeutic natural products, and c) the micropropagation of plants for the production of large therapeutic molecules (LTM) including fructooligosaccharides classified as prebiotic and functional food crops.

New Insights Into Tissue Culture Plant-Regeneration Mechanisms

“…Many endangered or rare species have been successfully propagated using micropropagation, including Artemisia hololeuca and Hyssopus angustifolius ( Zayova et al, 2018 ; Chokheli et al, 2020 ). Furthermore, many high-demand medicinal plants have been mass-developed using micropropagation ( Moraes et al, 2021 ). Efficient regeneration depends on an appropriate micropropagation protocol, including explant types, medium compositions, and culture conditions ( Singh, 2015 ).…”

Temporary Immersion System for Production of Biomass and Bioactive Compounds from Medicinal Plants

“…In the last 20 years in particular, numerous papers have been produced reporting the optimization of micropropagation protocols for medicinal species, mainly the threatened plant species [4,[8][9][10]. The micropropagation of medicinal plants is a tool for producing plants with high-yielding chemotypes for cultivation and industrial purposes, and thus it allows for production of biomass with genetically identical chemotypes and select plants based on the chemical profile in order to standardize a particular chemotype [11]. Finally, micropropagation is useful for reducing consumption pressure on potentially threatened wild populations [11,12].…”

Gentianella lutescens subsp. carpatica J. Holub.: Shoot Propagation In Vitro and Effect of Sucrose and Elicitors on Xanthones Production

“…However, these studies were performed in only a few species of the genus Gentianella , and included G. austriaca [ 18 ], G. bulgarica [ 19 , 20 ], Gentianella albifpra [ 21 ], and G. bicolor [ 22 ]. Considering the rarity and medicinal importance of G. lutescens, tissue culture would be a suitable tool, not only for conservation purposes, but also for overcoming the deficit of plant material in order to perform phytochemical investigations and in the development of technology for the extraction of important metabolites [ 23 ]. Although a lower content of secondary metabolites of interest in the tissue of cultured plants compared to natural plants may limit the applicability of tissue culture [ 17 ], it also offers the possibility to stimulate their production using various strategies.…”