Cultured cambial meristematic cells - a sustainable route towards in vitro production of phytochemicals

Plant-derived natural products or secondary metabolites attract a great deal of attention pertaining to their structure, synthesis and production of wide variety of economically important products, such as flavors, fragrances, pigments, dyes, fine chemicals, cosmetics, nutraceuticals, drugs and pharmaceuticals. Most common approach for obtaining these compounds is from their native source i.e. plants. However, this conventional process presents a number of disadvantages such as non-availability of these metabolites from plants throughout year, difficulty in plant cultivation and inconsistent product yield due to climatic variations. Difficulty to obtain sufficient amounts of desired plant material, their slow growth, varying composition and concentration depending upon the geographical position and climatic conditions coupled with low yield of isolated compounds are some of the limitations of commercial extraction of these compounds by using plants as a single resource [1,2].