Plant Biotechnology and Medicinal Plants

Plant tissue culture and advanced biotechnologies have proven to be influential tools that complement conventional breeding and accelerate development of many medicinal plants. Various approaches, such as pathway engineering, precursor feeding, transformation, elicitation with biotic and abiotic elicitors and scaling up in bioreactors, have been explored to improve the production of secondary metabolites from different medicinal plants. This book provides a comprehensive description of various studies, carried out on in vitro culture and hairy root cultures of Catharanthus roseus, Silybum marianum and Digitalis species which have been considered as alternative sources for the production of anti-tumour compounds, flavonolignans and cardenolides. Specific focus is on elicitation strategy for increasing production of bioactive compounds of C. roseus L., S. marianum and Digitalis species to overcome the constrains of conventional propagation. This book is valuable for researchers or students working on medicinal plants, phytochemistry, and plant tissue culture. It also serves as a reference for the pharmaceutical industry.