Question

Plant tissue culture is considered as the factory for the production of cosmetics and various natural care products. Justify the statement.

Answer 1

Answer to above question

Plant tissue culture is a collection of different techniques used to maintain growth of plant cells, tissues or organs under sterile conditions on a nutrient culture medium of known (defined) composition.

Different techniques in plant tissue culture make plant tissue culture advantageous over traditional methods of propagation, including:

1. The production of exact copies of plants that produce particularly good flowers, fruits, or of desirable traits.
2. To produce mature plants quickly .
3. The production of multiple copies of plants in the absence of seeds or necessary pollinators to produce seeds.
4. The regeneration of whole plants from plant cells that have been genetically modified (called totipotency).
5. The production of plants in sterile conditions that permit them to be transfered with greatly reduced chances of transmitting diseases, pests, and pathogens.
6. The production of plants from seeds that have very low chances of germinating and growing .
7. To clean particular plants from different kind of infection like viral and other infections and to quickly multiply these plants as 'cleaned stock' for horticulture and agriculture.

Steps involved in plant tissue culture

Selection of explant Trimming of explant according to requirement of tissue culture Surface sterilization of explant Washing of explant with distilled water Establishment of culture Incubation of particular temperature necessary for growth Subculturing for increasing no.of plant.

Using above technology Plant tissue culture find itself applicable in many areas like Clonal Propogation ,Micropropogation,biomassenergy preservation,germplasm conservation,somatic hybrids ,transgenic plants,genetic variability,breaking dormancy,synthetic seed formation and there are many more like this.

Production of drugs, cosmetics, and food which are derived from plant cell and tissue cultures has a long tradition. The emerging trend of manufacturing cosmetics and food products in a natural and sustainable manner has brought a new wave in plant cell culture technology . Plants have been always seen as the main source for active cosmetic ingredients, having proven health beneficial effects on human, such as anti‐aging, antioxidant, anti‐inflammatory, UV‐protective, anti‐cancer, anti‐wrinkle, skin soothing, whitening, moisturizing, etc. Extracts from herbal, aromatic and/or medicinal plants are widely used as effective active ingredients in cosmeceuticals or nutricosmetics, especially in products for topical application and skin‐care formulations .

Plants are the oldest source of natural compounds with both medicinal and cosmetic properties explored by the mankind. Even nowadays, between 70 and 80% of the people worldwide rely on traditional herbal medicine to cover the basic healthcare needs .Basically ,11% of the existed essential drugs used in modern human medicine are still with plants origin and percentage of plant‐derived natural products, applied as active ingredients in cosmetics, is much higher. With the continuous increase of world population, the demand over the globe for natural plant ingredients is expected to continue its exponential growth .

To avoid extinction of plants which contain useful ingredient that are useful for pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry plant tissue culture is used to produce multiple copies of such plants. Phytochemicals, such as polyphenols, phenolic acids, triterpenes, flavonoids, stilbenes, steroids, carotenoids, steroidal saponins, sterols, fatty acids, polysaccharides, sugars, peptides, etc., could be extracted with appropriate solvents and are used as active ingredients found in cosmetic formulations Main objective is to obtain natural phytochemicals by using an environmentally sustainable biosynthetic platform( plant cell culture technique) is exceptionally attractive for the production of active ingredients for high added values “green” cosmetic formulations.

To name a few plants like ALOEVERA,TULSI,NEEM,ROSES LAVENDER ,JEJUBA,CALENDULA,GERANIUM ,BASIL are used in production of cosmetics and health care products due to presnce of active secondary metabolites by process of plant tissue culture. Researches are being done to find out more plant species to be used in cosmetic industry to make it safe and more reliable for general public and to be used for daily care need without any fear of side effects.