Abstract
Plants have always provided food, fuel, food additives, drugs, pesticides, pigments, resins, perfumes and other important industrial, medicinal and agricultural raw materials. The techniques of plant, organ, tissue and cell culture have evolved since the beginning of this century and combined with recent advances in genetics and using conventional plant breeding, the plant biotechnology is having a significant impact on agriculture, horticulture and forestry. Some examples of the current applications in agriculture are micropropagation, somatic embryogenesis, virus and pathogen elimination, embryo rescue, germplasm storage and plant modification by somaclonal variation and genetic engineering. Another significant potential of plant biotechnology is in vitro production of fine chemicals using plant cell/organ cultures. However, there are several problems associated with such production technologies and the commercial processes are confined to a few examples, mainly in Japan. The whole field of plant biotechnology is expanding fast; with increased understanding of plant biochemistry, molecular biology, physiology and parallel developments in analytical sciences, instrumentation, bioreactor design and downstream processing the future can hold exciting possibilities.
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