Industrial agricultural crops as a source of specialty chemicals — soy example

When considering the idea of sustainable development, as desirable future of our civilization, we tend to focus attention on biomass in general and particular plants and crops, as renewable resources of food and energy. Currently celebrated International Year of Chemistry (IYC 2011) should, in our opinion, provide an inspiration for some wider perspective, in particular for rational exploitation of secondary metabolites (SM), which are often treated as waste materials of a prime commodity manufacturing process. Additionally, proper balance between three main methods of manufacturing: isolation from natural sources, biotechnology and chemical synthesis, should be considered for each and every chemical substance, needed to support our well being. Environmental considerations, employing green chemistry reasoning, should be given priority, before short term economic gains. Although there is no universally accepted theory explaining occurrence and function of SMs in microorganisms and plants, their recognition as useful materials date from ancient times and continue to grow with accumulation of knowledge about properties of individual natural products. In particular SMs are perceived as valuable leads for medicinal chemistry and development of new therapeutics. Many acetogenins, alkaloids, flavo-noids, glycosides, peptides, sterols and terpenoids are used as drugs, directly or after minor synthetic modifications – it is estimated that more than half of currently used drugs are derived from natural products pool [1, 2]. Other category of SM, with lower value per mass unit, applied in food or cosmetic industry are considerably less publicized, and sources of particular substances are difficult to trace. It concerns, among other, such well known fine chemicals as: vanillin, menthol, ascorbic acid, maltol, carnithin, toco-pherol, for which the term: " natural " became somewhat ambiguous, at least for uneducated user, as products of various origin entered market competition. As a rule, synthetic chemistry takes over, when isolation of a low molecular weight SM from biological matrix is an alternative. A notable example is monoterpene l-menthol, applied in many branches of pharmaceutical, food, cosmetics and tobacco industry, first obtained by freezing out from peppermint oil, now manufactured by multi-ton, by sophisticated chemical synthetic process. In our opinion, special consideration should be given to SMs, which are already recognized as valuable chemical entities , but their content in plants, particularly agricultural crops of industrial significance is so low, that it would not justify an investment in isolation process development. Case of soy (Glycine max Merril) can serve as a good example to illustrate our …