Studies on tissue culture of Chinese medicinal plant resources in Taiwan and their sustainable utilization

Medicinal plants are sources of important therapeutic aid for alleviating human ailments. With increasing realization of the health hazards and toxicity associated with the indiscriminate use of synthetic drugs and antibiotics, interest in the use of plants and plant-based drugs has revived throughout the world. However, a large number of medicinal plants remain to be investigated for their possible pharmacological value. Most of the pharmaceutical industry is highly dependent on wild populations for the supply of raw materials for extraction of medicinally important compounds. Due to a lack of proper cultivation practices, destruction of plant habitats, and the illegal and indiscriminate collection of plants from these habitats, many medicinal plants are severely threatened. Advanced biotechnological methods of culturing plant cells and tissues should provide new means of conserving and rapidly propagating valuable, rare, and endangered medicinal plants. This paper describes the work carried out at the Taiwan Agricultural Research Institute and Chaoyang University of Technology on in vitro propagation of some important medicinal plants.