Screening plants for potential natural products
Humans have been making use of plants for as long as there have been humans and plants. The actual cultivation of plants for food and other products began with the Neolithic Revolution some 12,000 years ago and has been evolving ever since. Products derived from plants today span a wide range of applications, encompassing foods, materials, medicines, fuels and so on. Despite all of our technological advances, however, screening plants for potential products is still primarily done the old fashioned way – growing intact plants in nature, botanical gardens or greenhouses then subjecting them to tests. Conventional wisdom has held this to be the only way it can be done as in vitro cultures lack the ability to accumulate specific compounds that can be found in intact plants. As often proves to be the case, conventional wisdom appears to be wrong.