Chapter 8 - Abiotic elicitor strategies for improving secondary metabolite production in in vitro cultures of plants

Abstract

Biotechnological application areas of cell culture techniques applied for the production of secondary metabolites (SMs) are of great interest. As in many other fields, plant tissue cultures offer researchers great opportunities to gather basic information regarding the production and synthesis of secondary plant metabolites. Plant cell cultures are studied concerning the production of essential pharmaceuticals and high-value metabolites. Today, natural food additives obtained from cell cultures are increasingly preferred compared to their synthetic counterparts. Although the potential of cell cultures for the production of SMs is excessively high, the low target substances are commercially discouraging. There are several approaches to plant cell cultures, such as the use of biotic and abiotic elicitors to boost crop yield. Elicitors are defined as compounds that induce or enhance the biosynthesis of specific metabolites when they are included in a living cell system at low concentrations. Abiotic elicitors consist of substances that can be classified according to nonbiological physical, chemical, and hormonal factors. Techniques such as adding elicitors to the nutrient medium containing cells promote the understanding of metabolic events that regulate the synthesis of SMs by plant cells. Due to the advantages they provide, these techniques can also contribute to the industrial production of SMs of plant cells.