Downstream processes for plant cell and tissue culture

Abstract

Biotechnological cultivation of plant cells and tissues is one of the most challenging fields of recent scientific researches. The requirements of pharmaceutical and food industries in terms of value-added phytochemicals have increased rapidly in the last few years. Therefore, cost-effective and technically sound downstream processes have to be developed in order to supply standardized end-products. Depending on the utilization of the biomass or the culture broth, different types of facilities are needed for the recovery and quali-quantitative analysis. The aim of this chapter is to summarize mass transfer considerations and critically outline the developments in downstream processing of plant cell and tissue cultures by presenting fundamental knowledge as well as the advantages and disadvantages of some conventional and novel techniques such as supercritical fluid and membrane processes. Furthermore, state of the art for recovery and purification of secondary metabolites were discussed in the light of patents via Espacenet database covering US, Japan, European, Korean, and Chinese issued and applied patents and WIPO publications. Innovative downstream processes in combination with hyphenated techniques representing a modern approach to perform fast and reproducible analytical methods for quantification and quality assurance of secondary metabolites are major challenges for industrial-scale applications of plant cell and tissue cultures.