Exploring plant tissue culture to improve the production of phenolic compounds: A review

Maria Inês Dias,Maria João Sousa,Rita C Alves,Isabel C.F.R Ferreira

doi:10.1016/j.indcrop.2015.12.016

Abstract

Plant tissue and organ culture has been extensively used from the beginning of the XX century for the study and comprehension of some primary biological mechanisms such as morphogenesis. However, with the increasing demand of the market for novel products derived from plants, in vitro culture became a reliable technique for the mass production of plant material. Moreover, the potential to use this technique for the production of some bioactive compounds, such as phenolic compounds, is immense since it allows the manipulation of the biosynthetic routes to increase the production and accumulation of specific compounds. This work intends to make a brief historical review of in vitro culture, highlighting its use for the production of bioactive compounds. Also, emphasizes the importance of phenolic compounds for the consumer as well reviews the metabolic pathways involved in its production in plant cells. Furthermore, it was carried out a comprehensive study on the work developed for the production of plant phenolic compounds in in vitro cultures, as well as on the type of elicitors used to increase of the same production; also a brief highlighting of the phenolic compounds which serve as elicitors. There are numerous reports directed to the production of phenolic extracts in in vitro plant cultures, however there is a lack in the production of individual phenolic compounds mainly due to the complexity of the biosynthetic routes and extraction procedures. Elicitation procedures are often used to increase the production of phenolics, achieving in most cases higher yields than in non-elicitated cultures. The increasing production of bioactive phenolic extracts/compounds allows for their further applicability, namely in the industry of functional foods or in pharmaceutical/medical fields.

Highlights

In view of an updated description of in vitro culture, a brief historical review of this topic is presented in Fig. 1, in which the most striking points for the development of this technique are presented, focusing especially on the production of bioactive compounds of high interest
One example of biotechnology engineering process combined with biochemistry is the methodology of hairy root cultures, where the plant material is infected with Agrobacterium rhizogenes allowing greater genetic stability and growth, and higher yields of bioactive compounds production, that are secreted to the medium, and extracted and purified (Anand, 2010)
The biological elicitation in plant tissue culture systems is based, as previously mentioned, on the inoculation of bacteria and fungi strains that stimulate the phenylpropanoid pathway as a response to the microbial attack, improving the production of phenolic compounds and, in some cases, achieving higher biomass production (Al-Amier et al, 1999; Verpoorte et al, 1999)

Summary

Introduction

One example of biotechnology engineering process combined with biochemistry is the methodology of hairy root cultures, where the plant material is infected with Agrobacterium rhizogenes allowing greater genetic stability and growth, and higher yields of bioactive compounds production, that are secreted to the medium, and extracted and purified (Anand, 2010). The phenolic compounds became desirable targets for in vitro culture, which provides the necessary stress conditions for their production and increases the excretion of these secondary metabolites by the plant tissues (Matkowski, 2008).

Results

Conclusion