Adventitious roots and secondary metabolism.

Plants are a rich source of valuable secondary metabolites and in the recent years plant cell, tissue and organ cultures have been developed as an important alternative sources for the production of these compounds. Adventitious roots have been successfully induced in many plant species and cultured for the production of high value secondary metabolites of pharmaceutical, nutraceutical and industrial importance. Adoption of elicitation methods have shown improved synthesis of secondary metabolites in adventitious root cultures. Development of large-scale culture methods using bioreactors has opened up feasibilities of production of secondary metabolites at the industrial levels. In the present review we summarize the progress made in recent past in the area of adventitious root cultures for the production of secondary metabolites.