Impact of Abiotic Elicitors on In vitro Production of Plant Secondary Metabolites: A Review

Plants are the complex organisms, it forms an important part of our everyday diet and their constituents and nutritional value have been intensively studied for decades. In addition to essential primary metabolites like carbohydrates, lipids and amino acids, higher plants are also able to synthesize a number of low molecular weight compounds called the secondary metabolites. Plant secondary metabolites are the diverse group of organic compounds that are produced by plants to facilitate interaction with the biotic and abiotic environment to establish the defense mechanism [1]. Plant secondary metabolites are unique sources of pharmaceuticals, food additives, flavors and industrially important biochemicals [2]. Plants will continuously produce the novel products as well as chemical models for new drugs in the coming centuries, because the chemistry of the majority of plant species is yet to be characterized. The advent of chemical analyses and the characterization of molecular structures have helped in precisely identifying these plants and correlating them with their activity under controlled experimentation. Despite advancements in synthetic chemistry, we still depend upon biological sources for a number of secondary metabolites including pharmaceuticals.