In Vitro Culture: Means for Production of Biological Active Compounds from Industrial Crops

Industrial plants are the marvelous source for the new bioactive products with medicinal properties in plant-based drug development. Secondary metabolites (SMs) originated from various parts of industrial plants like barks, leaves, stem, seed, and roots are economically important in different fields as cosmetics, herbal drugs, pesticides, insecticides, dyes, flavors, fragrances, pesticides, and food additives. Different in vitro methods (specially callus culture, cell suspension culture, and hairy roots culture) have gotten great interest due to their capacity for commercial production of SMs in these plant species in a commercial scale. In this chapter, the current researches and developments on production of different SMs through in vitro culture methods have been discussed. Here, different kinds of SMs (e.g., phenolic compounds, alkaloids, glycosides, terpenoids, phytosterols, pigments) and their benefits have been introduced through tissue culture-based methods in industrial plants. Also the influence of in vitro elicitation process (biotic and abiotic agents) and environmental stresses is discussed on the contents of bioactive compounds and their changes. The triggering effects of different kinds of elicitors on production of some of important pharmaceutical compounds in industrial plants is also discussed.