Biotechnology approaches for improvement of medicinal plants

Medicinal plant had uses as a major source of medicine since thousand years ago. Using approach such as cell, organ and tissue culture, as well as genetic engineering and molecular markers, biotechnology is able to extend application and effacing of medicinal plant as renewable sources in production of medicine. Cell, tissue and organ culture, has facilitated the massive and rapid propagation of a large number of medicine plant. Propagated plants through in vitro methods are free-disease and uniform in terms of quality and genetics. Cryopreservation (Long-term Conversation in liquid nitrogen) is a useful approach in preserving endangered plant spices. Over recent years, cell and organ suspension culture has gone notices for providing secondary metabolites and studying metabolite biosynthesis pathway. So far, cell culture for a wide range medicinal plants have been investigated, and fundamental compounds such as flavonoids, tannin, alkaloids have been produce. Some of the most significant factors in increasing production of secondary metabolites in cell culture are as follows. Genetic engineering has played in important role in identification and genetic modification of enzymes, involved in metabolic biosynthesis of secondary metabolites with limited efficiency yield. Due to their independence on age, physiological and environmental conditions, molecular markers are plant special and studying genetic diversity, classification of inheriting pool and determination of genetic map. This article is a review of different biotechnological approaches which are effective in improving efficiency and production of high quality.