Biotechnological Rescue For Depleting Green Treasures

 The world has witnessed a flourished in urbanization and industrialization over the last two centuries that ironically coincided with increase in the number of endangered and threatened plants. There is no denying the fact that whole plants and/or their products were used since centuries as an antidote for various human diseases/disorders traditionally, and that age old indigenous practice is finding more and more acceptors with every passing day due to its obvious health benefits over other forms of medicine.

 The homeostasis of forest ecosystem which provides natural habitat for medicinal plants is being disturbed now a days alarmingly to satisfy the selfish ends of mankind and while doing so, we are doing nothing but playing in the hands of nature which is surely going to back fire soon, and in fact, it is back firing already with climate change as one of the harsh reality. It is true that state cannot escape from the responsibility of providing safe and durable herb based health care facilities to its subjects but it cannot be done at the expense of dwindling forest resources if we really want to leave something for our future generations. Having said that, ground realities does not seem to have changed much which means that green gold continued to be exploited even at a faster rate now, evidences of which one can see in the unregulated expansion of herb based markets worldwide with products like patented medical goods, food additives, herbal teas, extracts, and essential oils being released at a pace like never before implying more raw materials are being extracted from the already declining natural flora. 

Increased population pressure combined with resurgence of interest in herb based alternative systems of medicine like unani, ayurveda and homeopathy has put the forests under double squeeze. This coupled with unscientific destructive methods of plant collection often by local untrained people endangers the very existence of valuable medicinal plants. Thus, the need of the hour is not only to frame a location specific sound conservation policy but more importantly to implement it in its true spirit to restore sustainability. It is also high time that we all irrespective of our affiliations, ideologies and opinions do our bit in achieving the desired goal. Conservation of forest flora is practically possible only if we find some viable alternative ways of producing raw material and/or - bioactive products that are otherwise extracted from forests.

In this context, biotechnology has lot to offer both in terms of providing rare plant material directly for downstream processing through micro-propagation and bulk production of active principles/bioactive compounds in cultured plant cells on the pattern of microbial fermentation through biotransformation, and in either case, natural base of these rare medicinal plants will be least affected, infact, it may show signs of improvement as well. Micro-propagation based on the principle of to-tipotency which means that every plant cell has the ability to regenerate into the whole plant given the right stimulus under controlled in vitro conditions, can be used successfully for bulk production of valuable plant material in a relatively short time and there are already success stories of the usage of this technology in various agricultural/ horticultural crops including plantation and forest crops.

 Micro-propagation technology not only offers rapid and large scale multiplication of desired plants but has other advantages such as only small amount of starting material (explant) is required in the beginning and plants produced are disease free as the explants are mostly taken from disease-free meristematic tissues. Additionally, the technology breaks free from the seasonal cycles that is, the plants can be produced throughout the year irrespective of season. Pharmaceutical companies can rely on the micro-propagation technology for steady supply of raw material rather than the conventional and tedious methods of herb collections. Wider practical application of micropropagation depends on reduction of costs so that it can become competitive with seed production or traditional vegetative propagation methods (e.g., cuttings, tubers and bulbs, grafting). Besides micro-propagation, metabolic engineering and biotransformation aims at laboratory production of bioactive compounds that are otherwise derived from the intact plants. Here, plant cells are engineered in such a way to act as bioreactors for bulk production of bioactive compounds on the pattern of microbial fermentation given the conducive physical, chemical and biological requirements are fulfilled. 

Apart from the routine applications, metabolic engineering and biotransformation can prove quite effective in the bulk production of secondary metabolites which are naturally found at low concentrations in their source plants, and primarily because of which forests are being exploited. Though, it is true that secondary metabolite production is a tedious process as their pathways are complex, poorly understood and Multigenic, but it would not be long before these bottlenecks will get overcome by the advancement in plant molecular biology and biotechnology. Thus, biotransformation with its ability to produce biologically active compounds both within and outside of cells provides an alternative method of supplying valuable natural products/ secondary metabolites that would have been otherwise extracted from declining natural sources. It is expected that with elevated demand, along with reduction of market price more in vitro culture products may see further commercialization.

Summary

Plant biotechnology has emerged as an important tool for multiplication and conservation of the endangered and rare populations of medicinal plants. Using environmental friendly in vitro technologies, a great number of identical plants can be propagated, regenerated and transferred back in nature thus restoring and expanding wild habitats. On the other hand, natural habitats of the medicinal plants will be less subjected to vulnerable exploitation if the valuable raw material could be obtained by alternative means. In this sense by micro-propagation of plants, enormous amounts of of biologically active substances in laboratory conditions through biotransformation contributes to less utilization of the natural resources and thus protecting the species. The fact that in vitro cultures, cells, tissues, organs and plantlets can produce metabolites specific for the intact donor plant is of tremendous importance for sustainability as it can serve both ends.