In vitro Regeneration and Conservation of the Medicinal and Aromatic genus Kaempferia: An Overview

Genus Kaempferia comprises about 124 species distributed in Southeast Asia and is well known for it's diverse medicinal, nutritional and industrial values. The plants of the genus are rhizomatous, perennial, and oil-yielding plants; some are also used as spices. The essential oil obtained from the plants has a considerable market value worldwide. The rhizomes of these plants were used in traditional medicine due to the presence of diverse bioactive compounds and used to treat urinary tract infections, fever, cough, hypertension, metabolic disorder, asthma, rheumatism, epilepsy, skin diseases, etc. Seed dormancy, seasonal outgrowth and seed made through crosspollination were found to be non-viable, which are the prime limitations of ex situ conservation regarding this genus. To overcome this type of problem, in vitro tissue culture is the way to get the plants available over the year without any limitations. This chapter is based mainly on exploring those bioactive compounds containing species of the genus Kaempferia, and obtaining an alternative resource of phyto-compounds for use in pharmaceuticals and conserving them through an artificial way to get them throughout the year without exploiting the area and genotypic alteration.

Keywords: Conservation, Kaempferia, Micropropagation, Phyto-compounds, Zingiberaceae.