Production of Plant Secondary Metabolites: Current Status and Future Prospects

Plants are the prime life-supporting system on earth. Despite its use as food, it is also utilized as a source of life-saving drugs for majority of the population in the world. Many plants yield phytochemicals known as secondary metabolites, which are pharmaceutically important and are extracted directly from the plants collected from natural habitat. Regardless of conventional methods, biotechnological approaches especially plant tissue culture techniques play a unique role in producing and extracting secondary metabolites at industrial level. This book chapter discusses the various strategies adopted for secondary metabolite production in plants.