This chapter deals with the production of terpenoids, including pharmaceuticals and food
additives through plant cell cultures, shoot cultures and root cultures obtained through biotechnological
means. Plant cell and hairy root cultures are promising potential alternative sources for the production
of terpenoids of industrial importance. Several strategies have been adopted for the enhancement of
metabolites. There has been tremendous success in the production of terpenoids such as capsaicin from
cell cultures of Salvia officinalis and Capsicum annuum. Procedures for the commercial production of
paclitaxel (Taxol®) by this technique are in advanced stages of development and may soon be
employed for the manufacture of these important drugs. The levels of sugar, nitrate, phosphate and
growth regulators have been shown to affect the productivity of secondary metabolite-accumulating
cultures. Precursor feeding has also been an obvious and popular approach to increase metabolite
production in plant cell cultures. Culture environmental conditions such as light, temperature, medium
pH and oxygen have been examined for their effect upon terpenoids accumulation in many types of
cultures. Organ cultures are relatively more stable. There are a number of medicinal plants whose shoot
cultures have been studied for terpenoids. Similarly, root cultures are valuable sources of medicinal
compounds. Until now, there is no commercial process as an alternative for root-derived compounds,
except in case of utilizing hairy root culture systems. The ability of Agrobacterium rhizogenes to induce
hairy roots in a range of host plants has lead to studies on it as a source of root-derived pharmaceuticals
and several hairy roots have been put to scale–up studies in bioreactors. Most remarkable developments
of scale-up in large vessels have been in the cultivation of Panax ginseng hairy root biomass.
Keywords: Terpenoids, secondary metabolites, biotechnology, iridoid, saponoside, micropropagation,
plant cell culture, organ culture, biotransformation, plant growth regulators, precursor, elicitation.
