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Plant cell culture, the growth of plant cells on solid medium or in liquid, was originally used to study the physiology and biochemistry of plants without the complication of the whole plant. However, it was soon found that plant cell cultures were often capable of producing compounds characteristic of the original plant. Of particular interest were those compounds known as secondary products. Secondary products are poorly defined, but in general are products that are not essential for growth, but may confer some advantage. The plant kingdom produces a vast range of secondary products, many of which, such as morphine and diosgenin, are of commercial interest. Since plant cell cultures are capable of producing such compounds (1-3), they have been of interest for the development of a biotechnological process to produce these compounds. Initially, the accumulation of secondary products was fortuitous, but with selection and medium changes, high levels of the products have been achieved that in some cases exceed those found in the whole plant(2-4). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Plant cell culture has great potential as an alternative system for the production of phytochemicals normally extracted from whole plants, many of which have commercial value. Suspension cultures of plant cells have been shown to produce compounds characteristic of the original plant, and in some cases the yield of these phytochemicals has been higher than that from the plant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The large-scale or mass cultivation of plant cells is the growth of plant cell suspensions at volumes above those normally produced in shake flasks, that is, above IL. Attempts to grow plant cells in fermenters or bioreactors started in the early 1960s with converted carboys. The area has developed steadily, such that today bioreactors in excess of 5000 L have been used successfully for large-scale plant cell culture (1,2). Much of the early work was carried out using bioreactors designed for microbial culture. It was soon found, however, that although plant cell suspensions appear to be similar in many ways to microbial cultures, there are, in fact, key differences that can have a significant influence on large-scale cultivation. Plant cells are large, 20-40 µM in diameter, and up to 100 PM in length; further, they rarely occur as single cells, but as aggregates of up to 2 mm in diameter (Fig. 1). The individual plant cell soon after division is typically rounded, containing considerable amounts of cytoplasm; however, as it ages, the cell expands and becomes dominated by a large vacuole. In consequence, the overall metabolic activity is low compared with microbial cells, which in turn gives a very slow growth rate (measured in days, [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]